Stage Fright
by Laura Picken
Summary: Sequel to Date with Destiny. The Commissioner has an interesting assignment for Jim and Blair.
1. Chapter 1

**Stage Fright**  
by Laura Picken

* * *

**Summary:** Sequel to _Date with Destiny_. The Commissioner has an interesting assignment for Jim and Blair.

**2012 Update: **Be warned that this is probably the only story where I've ever been accused of creating a Mary Sue character. If you know what that means (and some of you do) and you don't like those kind of characters, don't read it. One day I might edit this story to make her less of a Mary Sue, but until then...

On a timeline scale, this follows "_Pennies from Heaven_", and has one slight reference to it. This story has a very high SPF (Shameless Personal Fantasy) factor, with some romance, sense work, (hopefully) humor, and even a case thrown in for good measure. Many thanks to JR (a.k.a. Rene de Pree) for her help beta-reading this story, and to Yvonne McCool who's been an invaluable resource, critic, and help for mega-drooling suggestions for this story. The final scene in this story (when you see it) was almost entirely inspired by her. I owe you both big for this!

Humor me for a minute here guys - I just wanted to say to those writers whose stories I've read and I've never gotten a chance to e-mail a reply to (and believe me, the only things I _don't_ read are NC-17 or slash, so I've probably read any other Sentinel stuff that's been put up anywhere on the web), thanks for inspiring me. If I wrote thank yous to all you wonderful people for all the great fanfic you've written, I'd never have gotten around to writing stuff of my own, so just let it be known that if it weren't for you guys having the guts to post first, I wouldn't be here. So, thank you. I try not to rip off concepts without saluting the author first, so if I've ripped off anyone's story idea without permission, I apologize in advance. E-mail me and we'll try to work something out.

**Disclaimer**: All must sing the official anthem...(tap baton on keyboard-start official fanfic theme music). Jim, Blair, Simon and Cascade do not belong to me, but to Pet Fly Productions and Paramount. Chorus: Please don't sue! Please don't sue! I'm only doing this for fun. I may throw in references to other shows, songs, etc., and if I do, they belong to whomever they belong to. (repeat chorus) The other characters belong to me... I didn't research the theories on the science of sound that are used in this story-I just made them up off the top of my head to fit my own warped concepts.

One punctuation note: anything in brackets([ ]) is a thought.

* * *

"Thank you, Commissioner. I trust that you will handle this unfortunate situation with the utmost discretion."

"I will do my very best, Sir."

As the mayor left her office for the third time in a week, Cascade Police Commissioner Diane McPherson sat down at her desk, pulled out her homeopathic headache remedy, and stuffed 10 of the sweet pellets under her tongue. She then tried to take a long drink of water, and almost choked on 5 of the pellets that came up from under her tongue. [That's what I get for trying to take a double dose,] she thought. She prided herself on being able to handle just about any possible situation, but this was definitely a new one for her, even after more than 15 years in police work. She needed some advice on this one, so she turned to the one person that she knew she could talk to about anything-"Julia, could you come in here for a moment please?"

Her administrative assistant, Julia, casually walked in, pen and legal pad in hand, and asked, "Yes, Commissioner?"

"Julia, when we're alone, you could call me Diane, you know? After all, you are dating my kid brother."

Julia knew she was on a first-name basis with Diane, she just liked giving her (hopefully) future sister-in-law a hard time about her 'prestigious' position. "Whatever you say, Commissioner."

Diane glared at her assistant, then decided to get straight to the point. "Diane, do you know anyone on the force who can sing?"

Julia had always felt confident that she knew everything that someone in her position could know about the Cascade PD. But this was definitely a new one. She had to be hearing her wrong, "Sing?"

Diane nodded. "Apparently someone is calling in threats to the mayor's office about planting a bomb at the Cascade of Stars Festival. The mayor's been able to keep a lid on it so far, but he'd like me to send in a few undercover people to be safe. According to him, he 'doesn't want another Atlanta' on his hands."

"So he thinks the threats are legitimate?"

"Legitimate or not, he has a valid point. I know we can find people to work concessions, administration, and security pretty easily. I could even talk to my nephew Tom about bringing someone into the tech unions. But, I would also like to put someone in with the performers. Can never be too careful, after all. So, any ideas?"

"None that I can think of."

Both women sat in silence for a minute, thinking over all the contacts they had within the department who could discretely handle a situation like this one. Suddenly, Diane's eyes widened in realization. [ I have no idea if he could sing,] she thought, [but a guy like him could probably learn faster than anybody else on the force, and we -do- have a week before the Festival...]

Julia couldn't help but notice the look on Diane's face. Half the time, it meant that she needed to send her boyfriend home to pick up a change of clothes for her, because she would be working with Diane late into the night. She winced, and asked, "Do I need to call Chris?"

Diane smiled, "Not this time. Get Captain Banks on the phone, and tell him I'm going to need to borrow his best detective for a while. Then call Detective Ellison and ask him and his partner to meet me here in about an hour. And get my friend Sharon on the phone - I need to talk to her about training someone for me. If she can, have her come to the same meeting. I'm going to work out some of the details with regard to the other members of the team. They will meet us here in an hour and a half."

Julia nodded, and got up to get back to her phone. "Yes ma'am."

* * *

Blair had just finished his report and was about to grab Jim and head out the door for the day when Simon waved them over. Jim made it to his office, but before he could sit down, Simon had grabbed his coat and was ushering him back out again. "Grab your coat, Jim, we have another meeting with the Commissioner." Blair barely had enough time to grab the printed report from his desk before the quick-moving (and much bigger) men almost left without him.

* * *

As the three men walked into the (now very familiar) Commissioner's office, Julia waved them quickly into Commissioner McPherson's office while she was talking on the phone. "Go on in, gentlemen-she's expecting you." She then quickly resumed her conversation with whoever it was she was talking to.

The three men nodded their acknowledgment and walked into the office. Diane quickly cut off her phone call, with "All right, I'll see you in about ten minutes or so. Gotta go-they're here. Bye!" She then turned to her guests and extended her greetings. That last call did leave her time to exchange a few pleasantries. "Good evening, gentlemen. It's good to see you again."

The three men said a polite "Good evening" to the Commissioner, where Blair chimed in with "I have the report on our latest case," as he handed Diane the report he had so hastily grabbed from his desk.

Diane received the report from Blair, stapled it, and briefly skimmed the pages. As she was reading a part that caught her eye about the building explosion, she commented, "I always find your reports such interesting reading, Professor Sandburg. Apparently, you two seem to be able to validate forensic evidence in a fraction of the time it takes our entire division, if they catch the evidence at all. Amazing."

She put the report down, and got down to business. "Gentlemen, I'm sure you're all familiar with the Cascade of Stars Festival that is coming up next week." Jim and Simon both nodded, but Blair looked slightly confused. Sensing his partner's confusion, Jim explained, "It's a big party that the city throws about once every four or five years or so. There are concerts and a film festival, but the big event is a $1,000,000 talent show. People from all over the Northwest are auditioning for this. The grand prize in each category is $100,000 and a contract with William Morris. Even for the people who don't win the grand prize, it could be their big break. Talent scouts from all over the country are coming out for this-rumor has it this festival is where Nirvana debuted just before they made it big."

Diane chimed in, "Well, this year it seems we may be getting an uninvited guest. There have been several anonymous bomb tips phoned in to the mayor's office. There hasn't been anything confirmed yet, but the mayor doesn't want to take any chances, so he's asked me to assign a task force to go undercover during the event. Simon, if you don't mind, I'd like you to head up the group. I'd do it myself, but I've been asked to be one of the judges for the talent show, so I'm going to be stuck in a lot of social functions during the Festival. I need someone I can trust to man command central effectively. Will you be able to do it?" Simon nodded.

Diane continued, "Good. That takes a big load off my mind. I've got people who are working undercover with the technical unions, the concessionaires, and the cleanup crew. Simon, they'll report back to you, and you, in turn, will report back to me. I'll inform Chief Warren of this arrangement. There will be an independent security force there, but they'll all be screened thoroughly and half of them will be Cascade PD anyway, so I'll let the Chief handle them. That leaves one group that I need help with. Unfortunately, I think this will be the toughest place to find someone to go undercover."

Simon chimed in, "The performers, right?"

Diane nodded. "They're the most high profile group, unfortunately, they also have unrestricted access to all sites at the festival. Our guy could very well either be a performer or be working in cahoots with one of them in order to get his access. I need someone there who can pick up on the slightest little detail. Unfortunately, I also need someone who could go on stage if necessary and not make a fool of himself."

Jim groaned, but Blair still didn't understand. "So where do we come in?"

Jim looked at the Commissioner with a look of bewildered amazement on his face. "How did you find out about that?"

Diane replied, confused, "Find out about what?"

In unison, Diane and Jim then asked each other, "You mean- ", and before they could complete the sentence, both burst out laughing.

Simon and Blair looked at the two of them, understandably confused, and Simon, who hated total confusion much more than Blair did, declared, "Will someone _please_ tell me what is going on here?"

Diane, who by now had stopped laughing, explained, "I think the Detective and I were thinking of two different things. Detective, I'd like the you and your partner to go undercover with the performers. Professor, your cover is pretty simple-you'll be Jim's manager. Detective, I figured you'd be the best to go undercover as a performer because, with your hyperactive senses and excellent track record, you'd probably be able to pick up on something faster than anyone else in the department. I also figured that if you couldn't sing now, it would be easier to train you than anyone else. That was the call that the three of you walked in on-a very good friend of mine is a vocal coach, and I asked if she'd be willing to give you lessons to prepare for this. She agreed, and she should be here any minute. You don't happen to have any musical background, Detective?"

Jim replied, "Actually, I do, but it's been so long that I've forgotten almost all of it. If I tried to sing now, I'd probably screech so badly I'd kill every plant in this office. It would be interesting to try and learn it again."

Diane sighed in relief. Just then, Julia knocked discretely on the door, and Diane invited her in. "Commissioner, Sharon Driver is here."

"Excellent, Julia. Please show her in. Gentlemen, Sharon is the vocal coach I just told you about. Jim, I'll give the two of you a few minutes to get acquainted before the rest of the task force comes in and we have to start the briefing. If you'll excuse me, gentlemen, I'm going to make sure Julia has the conference room ready." She then got up and quickly excused herself from the room. As she grabbed the door to leave, Julia let Sharon into the room.

Blair took one look at Sharon and had trouble keeping his jaw from dragging on the floor. His choir teacher from his high school days was so old and strict that she completely turned him off to anything remotely connected to music for most of his undergraduate years. But one look at Sharon's big blue eyes, long blond hair and killer smile, and he knew he'd be willing to sing for this woman anytime. The three men got up as Sharon entered the room, and Jim, sensing his partner's reaction to the lovely young lady who just walked in, decided to take care of the introductions. "Miss Driver? I'm Jim Ellison, this is my partner, Blair Sandburg, and Simon Banks, who is the head of the task force."

Sharon shook hands with the three men and motioned for them to sit around the table. Her eyes seemed to linger on Blair for a moment before addressing the group, "It's good to meet you, gentlemen. I look forward to working with you."

As the group settled in around the table, Sharon pulled a small notebook and a pen out of her purse so that she could take notes. She addressed the group, "Forgive me, gentlemen, but Diane has told me very little about this case. Which one of you is going to be undercover with the performers?" Jim hesitantly nodded.

Sharon smiled her most reassuring smile. "Why Detective, you look nervous. Have you ever sang in public before?"

Jim replied, "Actually, I have, but it was a long time ago and an experience I would rather not repeat."

Blair looked at his partner, stunned. He had never seen Jim so on edge. He thought, [I have _got_ to find out what happened.]

Sharon, meanwhile, wrote down in her notebook, "definite baritone-no tenor, slight bass undertone to voice, might have trouble singing low or too high-very street-smart voice", and continued to reassure her client. "You'll do fine. For one thing, my philosophy is that everyone can sing. The vocal chords are an instrument, and God never made an instrument that is completely out of tune. You just need to learn how to play that instrument properly. Besides, you may not even have to go in front of a large audience. The first three stages of the competition are before the judges in a closed-door panel. The only people who will hear you in there are the judges, your manager-I assume Mr. Sandburg will play that role?" Blair nodded. "And anyone with all-area access. Most of them won't care what you sound like, anyway - they'll be too worried about their own performances to be critical of yours. Also, I'll be available to you at every stage of the competition, so if you need any extra help or coaching during the festival, just ask."

Simon was intrigued-as far as he knew, the number of people with all-area access was to be limited to the performers, with Blair being the only exception-he knew Diane would figure out a way to squeeze him in. He asked Sharon, "You'll have all-area access?"

Sharon nodded, "In addition to helping Detective Ellison here, I'm also competing in the female vocalist category. You think I'd pass up a shot at a hundred thousand dollars?"

In spite of himself, Blair let out a small chuckle, and Jim and Simon glared at him. Sharon, for her part, ignored the exchange between the three men. She turned to Simon and asked, "I take it that we'll be able to start first thing in the morning?" As he nodded, she opened her notebook to a blank sheet of paper and wrote down an address. "Very well, then, gentlemen. I expect to see you both promptly at 9 a.m. In case there's any problems, I gave you a phone number where I can be reached." Julia took advantage of the opportunity to quickly step into the office and inform the group, "The briefing is going to start in a few minutes, everyone. If you'll follow me to the conference room."

* * *

"Careful, careful!" called the voice from inside the rehearsal space. "The door's not going to open all the way. If you keep shoving at it like that, you're -going- to break my equipment."

Confused, Jim nevertheless complied with Sharon's request, and squeezed inside past the doorway, barely fitting into the entryspace for the too-small recording studio. Once inside, he was amazed not only at the amount of highly specialized technical equipment now crammed into the small room, but at the fact that Sharon had obviously carried in every piece of equipment earlier that morning. In a bizarre way, the technical setup was almost comforting, reminding him not of the showbiz nature of their assignment so much as one of Blair's Sentinel experiments.

Jim's musings were interrupted by the sounds of his partner clearing his throat behind him. "Uh, big guy, would you mind-?"

Jim suddenly realized that he had been blocking the door, completely preventing Blair from getting in. Moving forward into the wider area of the room, he allowed the younger man to squeeze his way into the room. "Sorry about that, Chief."

Blair sighed. "Next time, Jim, if you want to do some philosophical thinking when you enter a room, at least let -me- go in first?"

Jim smiled. Apparently all was forgiven, as always. "Sure Chief, whatever you say."

Finally able to get a good look at the room, Blair whistled at the impressive, although highly intrusive technical setup. The only thing in the room that didn't seem to be made of metal and plastic was the baby grand piano crammed into a corner at the far end of the room. Looking over the amplifiers, microphones, printers and spectrographs that were scattered around the room, Blair made a mental note to see if he could borrow some of this stuff in the near future. "Pretty impressive stuff, eh Jim?"

Jim nodded. "Yeah, it's impressive." Jim was barely focused on his guide's musings as he continued to examine the equipment in the room. Blair's borrowed equipment usually had 'property of Rainier University' stenciled in conspicuous places all over each piece, to protect the equipment from those who would want to keep it permanently. But this equipment was in showroom condition-not what you would normally expect from your average vocal coach. [Something about this isn't quite right...]

As Sharon turned around from adjusting one of the monitors, she noticed her student and his friend studying the equipment. She asked Jim, "I'll bet you're wondering what a vocal coach is doing with such highly specialized equipment, right?" Ignoring any possible response from the two men, Sharon was all business, positioning both men next to the piano. As she worked she continued to explain, "The equipment has to do with several theories I have about training people to sing. Jim, I need you to stand right here." She moved Jim gently over to her left, opposite the equipment, and handed him a wireless microphone. She then directed Blair, "Blair, it would be best if you could stand behind me. That way, you can see everything that's going on without getting in the way of my view of the equipment." She then gently directed Blair to a safe point behind the piano bench, and returned to her spot at the piano.

"Jim, put your hand on the piano for a minute." He put his hand on the piano as Sharon directed, and she played a middle C. She asked, "Did you feel the vibrations as I played the note?" Jim nodded. She then took the hand that Jim had on the piano and placed it carefully at his throat in a light choke hold. She directed him, "Okay, now try and sing 'oh' on this note." She played C one octave lower, and Jim mimicked the sound exactly as she directed. She asked Jim, "Did you feel a difference in the vibrations that you felt from the piano when I played middle C as opposed to the vibrations you felt from your throat when you sang the lower note?"

Fascinated, Jim nodded, then paused, thinking. He asked Sharon, "Can we try that again?"

She shrugged and replied, "Sure." He placed his hand on the piano, and focused on his sense of touch as Sharon played middle C again, using the sound of the note to keep from zoning out. The vibrations at his fingertips felt to him like a vibrating massage tool. He then placed his hand at his throat and sang the low C again. The vibrations were there again, strong, but much less frequent - like the massager had been switched from a high setting to a low setting. He explained to Sharon, "The vibrations feel similar, but it's like one set was faster than the other."

"Which one was faster?"

"The note that you played."

Sharon clapped her hands together in excitement. "Exactly! Each note on the musical scale had a different wavelength signature. As you go up or down octaves, the frequency changes, but not the wavelength. Now, I'm going to play the low C again, but this time, put one hand on the piano, and one hand to your throat as you're singing." She played the note, and he sang along, following her instructions. "The vibrations are identical to each other."

"Right! Blair, could you turn on the spectrograph for me?" Blair reached around the piano, and turned on the each of the three spectrograph monitors, which automatically registered a blank line.

Sharon then explained, "Jim, although you seem to be able to distinguish the sounds pretty accurately by touch, I also use the spectrograph to give people a visual impression of the notes they're singing that will help them to gain control over their tone."

Blair chimed in, "Kind of like the way biofeedback is used to control pain?"

Sharon agreed, "Exactly. One of these monitors is connected directly to the computer, one is tuned in to the frequency of my voice, and the third one is connected directly to the wireless microphone you hold in your hands." As she spoke, the line on the top monitor moved in synch with her voice. She directed Jim, "Let's try that last note again." She played the note, and Jim sang into the microphone, trying to match his voice as closely as possible to the note coming from the piano. The middle monitor registered the frequency of the piano perfectly, but the bottom monitor still registered a blank line.

Realizing her mistake, Sharon apologized, "Oops - sorry guys. Jim, your mike isn't on. Flip the switch on the side and the switch on the bottom of the mike." She repeated the note, and Jim followed her lead. Sharon watched the monitors intently, and noticed that while the top monitor registered a blank line, the middle and bottom monitors were registering almost identical wavelengths. She praised her student, "All right Jim, that's perfect! Two problems are typical in people who think they either can't sing or don't sing well: one is that they simply haven't learned the ability to recognize the note in the music and copy the necessary sound, and the other is that they can't control the sound for a lengthy period of time, which is what causes people to 'warble', sending them completely out of tune. At this point, you have three ways to be able to mentally process the sounds that you hear: first audibly, then through touch, and finally visually through the spectrograph. We'll keep the spectrograph on for the first couple of days, until you get used to feeling for the changes in notes. After that, I'll continue to encourage you to feel the vibrations in rehearsal, but since you can't exactly have your hand to your throat while you're performing, by the time of the show you should be confident enough to go entirely by what you hear. Now, let's go through a simple scale, so you can see the differences between the wavelengths of the different notes..."

Blair watched Sharon work with Jim, fascinated. It seemed like the teacher's young age apparently belied an immense amount of knowledge and wisdom, a comment that was often made about Blair as well. He couldn't tell whether or not Sharon knew about the Sentinel's abilities, although he trusted the Commissioner enough to know that she would not have been the one to tell Sharon if Sharon did know. Yet, her theories on voice training seemed tailor-made for someone with Jim's enhanced senses. He was practically chomping at the bit to talk to her about his research. But, to do that would probably mean revealing Jim's Sentinel abilities, and he would _never_ do that. [Not even for someone like her,] he thought, [although _man_ it's tempting.]

They had finished the scale, and Sharon looked approvingly at Jim, praising him. "Jim, you have a great voice. Why haven't you done more with it?"

Blair worked very hard to suppress his laughter, and failed miserably. He had tried for three hours the night to get Jim to tell him about his last 'musical experience', but Jim wouldn't budge. So Blair wasn't surprised when Jim simply shrugged off the compliment, replying, "Never needed to."


	2. Chapter 2

Halfway across town, a lone figure worked with great speed. A stick of dynamite, wrapped in C-4, connected to a remote transmitter, then each precious package carefully placed inside a burlap bag filled with coffee grounds and potpourri. He smiled to himself as he worked. [One bomb would be easy for them to find, but forty-two? They'll never know what hit them.]

The walls of his workspace were plastered with newspaper clippings, paying homage to those who came before: The Mad Bomber, The Unabomber, Oklahoma City. And in the center, his personal favorite-the Olympic Park Bomber. It was, in his eyes, the greatest unsolved disaster in history. So much attention paid to this one event, and yet those who did it were never caught.

[Just wait 'til they see what I can do,] he thought, [it'll make that guy look like he was playing with firecrackers on the Fourth of July. Those newspapermen will write about me all over the world. That is,] he snickered to himself, [those that are left.]

As he continued the assembly-line process, he smiled gleefully as visions of his great and glorious future. With a voice that was confident and strong, he started to quietly sing, "I'm going down in a Blaze of Glory..."

* * *

Jim sighed contentedly as he finished his lunch. "Sharon, that was delicious. You keep feeding us like that, I'm not going to be able to fit into whatever costume I have to wear to this thing. Speaking of which, what _do_ I have to wear to this thing?"

Sharon sized up the two men sitting at her kitchen table and grinned wickedly, "The contest rules stipulate that the individual vocalist competition nights are black tie events. I have a feeling those black tuxes are going to make the two of you _very_ popular."

Inwardly Jim winced. He hated having to get into that tux hanging waaay back in his closet.

Sharon continued, "During the closed-panel judgings, though, it's dress casual. You'd do fine in what you have on now."

At that, Jim breathed a sigh of relief. [Maybe we can close this case before the night of the finals,] he thought. [Then I can get out of this quickly.]

Sharon continued to work on putting together her Tex-Mex Chicken and Wild Rice Soup as she reviewed how the session went with Jim. [He's definitely talented, I'll give him that,] she thought, [now if we can get him to feel somewhat comfortable on a live stage, we'll be all set.] She then began to voice her thoughts out loud in order to get input from Blair and Jim. "Jim, I think you have more singing talent than you realize. I'm pretty confident we can have you ready for the competition end of your job by opening night." She was fully aware that there was an entire task force of people looking for this guy, but somehow she had a gut feeling that if anyone was going to catch this guy, it was the men sitting at her kitchen table drinking coffee.

She continued, "I'm not so much worried about your voice or your ear - they're both pretty strong as it is. I'm more concerned about your stage fright."

Blair repeated her last two words, just to make sure he was hearing them clearly. "Stage fright?"

Sharon nodded. "Your friend has a classic case of it. Just the thought of getting on stage in front of people makes him nervous. I don't think it has to do so much with the performance itself as the memories of that audition. Jim, you even said it yourself, once you got the part, you had no problem going through with the rest of the show, right?"

Jim nodded, "right."

Sharon continued, "I think that that audition, and the feeling of being 'different', of having to expose a very vulnerable, personal part of yourself to a very unforgiving audience was traumatic for you. And the fear of having to do exactly the same thing, again-that's what you're afraid of now."

Blair thought about it briefly, and, impressed, agreed with her. [Pretty astute observations for someone who's devoted her life to music,] he thought. Out loud, he asked, smiling, "can I ask you a question?"

Sharon replied, "Shoot."

Blair asked, "What's your degree in?"

Sharon tensed up slightly as she was cutting mushrooms and looked over at Blair. If his face or his voice had shown to be in any way threatening, it would take all of her self-control not to use the rather large knife she was holding in her hand. But he showed none of that type of statement at all. In fact, he looked impressed, surprised, amazed, appreciative and grateful all at once - like he would have thought of it himself if he could only wheedle the information out of his partner. She relaxed, smiled broadly and replied, "actually I have a Masters in psychology. I minored in music as an undergrad, and I'm going for my second Masters in music right now."

Blair was truly impressed. Everything she said fits in not only with the story Jim had told earlier, but also with his very private personality. [I'll bet she's amazing at parties,] he thought appreciatively.

Jim looked at the two of them and decided to bring the conversation back to work before things got out of hand. There would be time for the two of them to small talk later. He addressed the group, "so how do you think I can get past this?"

Sharon grinned excitedly as she threw the last of the mushrooms, garlic and cilantro into the soup pot and set the pot to simmer. She put down the cutting board and darted over to the living room, declaring, "the first step is one we're going to do this afternoon. I think you'll enjoy it." Blair and Jim followed in her wake as she led them over to an extensive CD collection. "Jim, one way to build your confidence when you're singing is to have great confidence in what you're singing. You're going to need at least five songs for the competition: one for each of the first three rounds, one should you be picked to go to the finals, and one for the 'celebration' show the last night of the festival, but we can worry about that one if you decide to perform in that show later on. The rules state that the three songs in the preliminary rounds should reflect a 'wide range of musical styles' - in other words, no one can do all ballads, no one can do all classical, no one can do all rock 'n roll; it's not allowed. I figure today we can go through these CDs and pick your songs for the competition. That way, we can spend the rest of the time we have getting you as comfortable with singing them as possible."

The two men gawked at the wall, which was covered top to bottom with what must have been 1,000 CDs of every genre: classical, jazz, modern and alternative rock, classic rock, pop music, oldies, Broadway and movie soundtracks, a few groups that even Blair didn't recognize. Joking, Blair commented, "what did you do, knock over a record store or something?"

"Not exactly. I got a lot of these from record clubs, some from friends. Just picked things up as they struck my fancy. Eventually one year my brother, as a Christmas present, built this case for them. You should see the cases he's made for his own collection - he would make a fortune if he ever mass produced them. They're incredible."

Jim knew he needed some sort of example to go on before he could even narrow down to a list of songs. He asked Sharon, "have you picked out your songs yet?"

Sharon smiled broadly. "Oh yeah. For the preliminaries I'm doing 'Any Man of Mine', 'All Fired Up' and a new version of 'Someone to Watch Over Me' that a friend of mine was kind enough to write me an arrangement for."

Blair rattled off the artists in his head. [Shania Twain, Pat Benetar and Gershwin? Wow. If she wanted to show range, that would do it all right.] He asked Sharon, "And what are you going to do for the finals?"

If it was possible, Sharon smiled even more brightly. Her eyes lit up as she replied, " 'Vision of Love' by Mariah Carey. The only other songs that I know that would show that strong a vocal range are operatic arias, and I thought it would be better to do a song that would get the crowd on my side."

Jim appreciated the logic in the way she chose her songs. Already his mind was going, and he had picked out a few CDs he wanted to take a look at.

* * *

Several hours and far too many CDs later, Jim was getting a major headache. They had listened to more music than he ever wanted to hear, and they had only found songs that Sharon could deem worthy enough for Jim to sing in the preliminary rounds. He had never met someone who was so unbelievably picky about a song. But half the time he found something he thought was good, she would take one look at him, and either say, "it's a possibility, we'll put it down on the list" or "no-you don't seem that thrilled with the song. Let's find something else." Even with all the noise from the music, Blair had fallen asleep a half- hour ago, and Jim was beginning to think he had the right idea. He glanced over at Sharon, and noticed that she seemed to be getting frustrated too. Confused, he asked her, "if this is driving you so crazy, then why are you being so picky about this?"

Sharon went over to the CD wall and replied, "Jim, trust me on this. The finals, should you get there, is going to be the biggest test for you. The song we pick for you has to be a 'signature' song. You need to be so confident singing this song that you can still sing it even if two words don't come out of your mouth otherwise." As Jim thought about how much that sounded like something Blair would say, Sharon found what she was looking for and popped it into the CD player. She then whispered, "Okay, what about this one?"

He listened as the soothing voice of Eric Clapton cranked out of the stereo, and he couldn't help but smile. Memories flooded back to him, particularly one night after the HTA case when he danced with a certain arson inspector...

Sharon watched the smile creep over Jim's face. "I take it you like the song?"

Jim leaned back against the sofa and stretched. "Yeah. Reminds me of someone. I sang it in her ear once while we were dancing. Made for a _very_ interesting evening."

Sharon grinned, and popped the CD out of the stereo. As she handed it to Jim, she directed him, "I think we're done for the day. See you tomorrow at 9?"

Jim looked at her, confused. Before he could ask the question, Sharon answered, "Jim, that is most _definitely_ your signature song. Any song that can bring up the type of memories I saw playing across _your_face_ while it was playing is a song that you could sing in your sleep. And speaking of sleep," she nodded over to Blair, who had made himself quite comfortable by this point, "it seems like that is exactly what Blair needs right now. What, did he stay up all night grading papers or something last night?"

"Actually, he was writing a paper."

"Then, as much as I'd like to keep him here, [WHAT!? WHY DID YOU SAY THAT?] go home and get some rest. I happen to know that the Commissioner made Simon reassign all your cases until after the Festival, so I _know_ you don't have anything to do tonight. Unless you can find that lady friend to practice singing to."

Jim almost blushed at that comment. "To be honest, I haven't talked to her in months. It was a rough time for her, and just after that dinner we had together, she left town for a while. She said she needed to get away from here-too many memories."

Sharon nodded understanding, and for a moment, her eyes darkened, as if she was fighting off her own demons. After an uncomfortably tense moment, Jim nudged his sleeping partner, trying gently to bring him to consciousness. Blair woke up with a start, as he always does when Jim has to wake him, then relaxed slightly when he realized where he was. "Wha? Oh, hi Jim."

"C'mon Chief, it's time to go."

"You finished getting your songs together?"

Sharon nodded, smiling. "We did. He's going to do great. I have a feeling that the singing is going to be the least of your worries on this case."

"Oh. Good." It was pretty clear that even though Blair was awake, he was still in a bit of a daze. Jim just laughed. "Sharon was right, chief. You do need to go home and get some rest. Let's go." He directed his partner to the elevator, carefully helped him into his coat, waved his good-byes to Sharon, and they left.

* * *

"...ninety-six, ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred!"

The lone figure counted each bag out loud. He had finished the packages way ahead of schedule. Better still, he had more than twice the number than he needed for his 'Grande finale'. [Maybe,] he thought, [I should put these extras to good use, do a few test runs.]

"After all, practice does make perfect, isn't that right, Socks?" The black pit bull with white paws howled his approval at the statement as his master stuffed twenty-nine small pouches into each of two pillowcases.

"Now, now, my friend, where shall we begin?..." He thought for a minute as he looked over a map of Cascade. As he caught a glimpse of the newspaper underneath, a smile lit up his face as he said, "Of course! Come Socks, we must away! We have an audience to entertain!" He laughed loudly as Socks followed him out the door and down the street.

* * *

So far, the audience had been loud and lively at it's approval of the movie. It wasn't often that you get a good crowd for a movie so old, but with the premier of "Speed 2" tomorrow, this free midnight screening of "Speed" drew quite an enthusiastic crowd. Marc never grew tired of movies - maybe that was why he bought his own theater. It was definitely why he was sitting in the back of said theater, listening to a hyperactive group of teenagers squeal at Keanu Reeves and roar whenever something violent happened on the screen. His wife had warned him that if he went to too many of these loud screenings, he would probably lose his hearing.

His last thought before he lost consciousness was that maybe she was right.

* * *

One thing that Jeannie had accepted a long time ago about working in the Mayor's office was that there would be nights she had to work until all hours. To her, it was just another part of the job. Her boss wasn't a tyrant, though, thank God. Working until 12:30 typing up that budget referendum undoubtedly meant that she would get the next day off. As she dreamed of what she would do with eight uninterrupted hours of peace, the phone rang. Cursing the fact that those eight hours hadn't started yet, she let the phone ring and continued her 'office-closing' ritual: turning off the copier, cleaning out the coffee pot, shutting down the computer. She had one rule in the office: after 7 p.m., the answering machine became her personal receptionist. It was turned up so she could screen the calls in case of emergency, but most of the time the calls that came in were from workaholic bureaucrats whose problems could wait until the next day anyway. Besides, Commissioner McPherson had wanted them to tape any incoming calls in case that psycho bomber called in again. She had no problem with that - that guy was creepy.

At the fourth ring, the machine picked up.

"Ah, joys of youth..."

Jeannie's face went white. It was him again.

"Young love, dating, movies - well, maybe not movies anymore..." His sinister laugh chilled her to the bone. She wasn't sure whether she should pick up or let the machine run in case the police needed the tape. She let it run, mostly because her fear of the man on the line rooted her where she stood as he went on.

"I can just picture what they're going to say tomorrow: 'Why? They were so young! They had so much to live for! It's all so senseless!' Maybe that's the point - the senselessness of it. Life is senseless, folks - only those 15 minutes are what really matter. And I'll get mine soon enough!" He started to hang up the phone, then picked up the receiver again and finished, "Oh, and just so you know that I mean what I say, check out the corner of 12th and Prospect tomorrow. Ciao darlings, kiss kiss! Let's do lunch!" *Click*

It took Jeannie a couple of minutes of listening to dial tone to compose herself enough to call the Commissioner. As the phone rang, she absentmindedly wondered what was on the corner of 12th and Prospect.

* * *

[One thing you think I would have learned by now,] thought Diane, as the phone rang, [whenever I think I'm going to get a good night's sleep for once, I should just assume that _something_ is going to wake me up.] As she picked up the phone, she was about to snap at the person on the other line when she heard that woman crying. Recognizing Jeannie immediately, she sat up, now fully alert. As reassuringly as she could, she soothed, "Jeannie, Jeannie, shhhh. Calm down, tell me what happened."

As always, Jeannie tried to be as polite and respectful as possible. "Sorry to wake you Commissioner, but he called again."

There was no point in elaborating on who 'he' was. Both women already knew.

"Did you get it on tape?"

"Yes."

"Can I hear it?" She quickly flipped on her personal phone recorder as Jeannie fumbled with the answering machine tape.

After the tape had finished, Diane asked, "Jeannie, can you put this in a safe place?"

"Sure. There's a safe in the mayor's office."

"Good. I'll have one of my men get it in the morning. Now, go home. Try and get some rest. Remember, it's not you he's after, you know."

"I know. Good night, Commissioner. And thank you."

"We'll find him, Jeannie. I promise." [If I have to die trying.]

"I know. Good night."

Just as Diane hung up the phone, it rang again. She picked it up, and before she could tell Jeannie again to go home, she recognized the male voice on the line. "What's up, Chief?"

"Commissioner, we got a big problem here."

"What kind of problem?"

"Explosion at a movie theater. Place was packed to the gills. Fifty kids are dead, almost a hundred on their way to the hospital. Inspector Reeves thinks is was a bomb. A _big_ bomb."

As she pulled herself out of bed and pulled her gun from the night table, she asked, "Where?"

"Corner of 12th & Prospect."

[12th & Prospect? Dear God.] "I assume Taggert and his crew are already out there?"

"There's on their way ma'am."

"Get Ellison & Banks from Major Crimes out there ASAP. I'll join you as soon as I can."

"Yes ma'am." *click*

She hung up the phone and silently cursed. Fifty kids? This guy was going to pay if it took her fifty years to track him down. She would be at the crime scene, all right. But first, she needed to make another phone call. She needed someone to look inside this guy's head.


	3. Chapter 3

Simon got to the crime scene before Blair and Jim, so when they were finally able to get past the crowds and crime scene barricades, Simon and Taggert filled them in.

Simon started, "Happened shortly after 1 a.m. Was a free midnight screening of 'Speed' for a bunch of high school kids. Completely took out the first five rows. I don't think anyone came out of there without some sort of injury." Jim could pick up the barely controlled anger in Simon's voice. Daryl was close in age to the kids who were killed in the blast. He was taking this one personally.

Jim then asked Taggert, "What kind of bomb was it?"

As Taggert pulled out a small trigger device, he replied, "not bomb. Bombs. Nine of them, placed in a line right behind the movie screen. The blasts were so strong most of the components burned to ash. This was the only thing I could get from 'em. Apparently the whole line was set off by some sort of remote triggering device."

Jim asked to see the device, and Joel handed it over to him. He sniffed discretely at it, then returned it to Joel. Blair and Simon knew that Jim was on to something, but just didn't want to talk about it in front of the Bomb Squad captain. Simon made a mental note to make _sure_ and find out what Ellison was thinking ASAP.

The group saw the news truck pull up, and groaned in unison. Then they saw the Commissioner's car pull up right behind the van, and the four men looked at each other, mentally trying to decide who was going to go where for what. Finally, Simon took charge and broke the stalemate. "Taggert, why don't you see if your team has turned up any more fragments from the bombs. We'll brief the Commissioner on what's going on."

Blair asked, "but what about the press?"

Simon smiled, "the joys of delegation. Oh Buchanon?"

Rafe looked at the press truck, then at his captain's smiling face and groaned. [How do I always get stuck with this job?] He walked over to the waiting reporter and cameraman, looking more like a man going to his execution.

* * *

The Commissioner walked over to the three men with well- controlled rage in her eyes. Simon repeated the briefing he and Taggert had just given Jim and Blair a few moments earlier. Diane reviewed the information for a moment, then turned to Jim and confidently asked, "what else do we have?"

Jim replied, "we've only been here a couple of minutes ourselves. But, I got a chance to take a look at one of the detonators, and I smelled residue of gunpowder and plastique, plus a couple of other things I couldn't quite place."

Diane directed them, "go behind what's left of the screen and see if you can find anything else. It seems that our friend who's been calling the mayor's office had a hand in this." As she took a look at the devastation around her, the rage became harder to control, and she started to fight back tears. She looked at Jim and stated in a barely controlled whisper, "I want this guy, Jim. Do whatever it takes, but I want him."

Jim nodded, and he and Blair headed back to the blast site. The more time he spent with the Commissioner, the more he respected how much she cared for the city and its people. He focused, filtering out the normal commotion of the investigation, and turned his senses up full blast, trying to pick up a hint of anything unusual. He picked up on the scent of the bombs again, so he filtered out the smells of the gunpowder and plastique in an attempt to determine what the mysterious scents were. In the distance, he caught the smells again, but stronger.

Blair watched his partner's attention change, and he asked him, "Jim? What's up?"

Still concentrating on the mystery scents, he replied, "remember when I was telling the Commissioner about a couple of unidentifiable scents on the detonator?" Blair nodded. Jim continued, "I found them again, but in a stronger concentration. It's coming from over here." He moved closer to the smells, Blair fast on his heels. He was so focused on the smells that when he reached the bag they were coming from, he almost zoned out.

Blair gently grabbed Jim by the shoulder to help him stay fully alert, and only then did they notice what it was that Jim had in his hands. He gently laid the bag on the ground, forced Blair two steps behind him, and both men yelled full throttle, "Taggert!"

Startled, Joel ran over to the two men, asking, "What's up, guys?"

Jim replied, "We may have a live one here."

Joel cursed, and started barking orders to his team out of his fear. "All right, clear these people out of here! Now! Get my gear! And where are my tools?!" Without thinking, Taggert reflexively reached into the bag, fingering for any sign of the detonator he had been examining all night. After he had worked with Blair, Joel learned to channel his fear and direct it into activity instead of letting it paralyze him. Now, watching him work on a potentially very deadly bomb, Blair wondered if he had made a mistake.

Inexplicably, Joel relaxed. Blair's eyes nearly popped out of his head, and he swallowed hard, wondering if the bomb was going to go off any second. Joel then yelled, "It's clear!" and Blair almost collapsed on the ground in relief. Intrigued, he walked back over to Taggert to hear how Joel could know the bomb was definitely _not_ going to go off. Jim, Simon and Diane followed closely behind. Joel then pulled the explosive device out of the bag and explained, "When the signal from the remote control detonated the other nine bags, a fuse in this one's triggering device short-circuited. That's why the bomb didn't go off. This one's a dud."

Simon looked at the bag, then looked around the room and ordered, "All right gentlemen, I want _every_ piece of dust in this area swept up and tagged as evidence."

Diane knelt down near the bag and asked the group surrounding her, "so how much closer does this get us to catching this guy?"

A female voice answered her, "I'd say you're as close as you're going to get."

All four men turned around, surprised, to find Sharon standing next to the charred remains of the first row of seats. Blair was the first to be able to stammer out, "what are you doing here?"

Nonchalantly, Sharon produced a leather wallet, and replied, "my 'day job'." Blair took the wallet from her, and absent-mindedly traced the letters "FBI" on one side of the walled. He looked up into Sharon's eyes and she seemed almost oddly apologetic. He had a million questions he wanted to ask, but before he could get up the courage, Diane's single-minded focus won out, as she asked, "what do you mean, 'as close as we're going to get' ?"

Sharon walked up to where the group was standing and reported her observations. "This guy's creative, and he's trying very hard to make sure we can't stop him before he does damage - that's why he used so many explosive devices. If we get one, he can still set off any one of the others and BOOM! we're history. He's also very smart - - I have a feeling he's warming up to something much bigger. That device you found was a lucky break - I think he was testing them to see how much damage they could do. Now that he knows, he'll probably get more creative, maybe change his MO a couple of times, but I guarantee you'll always find one or more of those," pointing to the detonator, "at each crime scene. By the time he gets to his 'big finish', whatever it happens to be, he's going to be very hard to catch. But, once it happens, he'll drop out of sight. We'll never get him after that. He may want to be famous, but he doesn't want to be found."

Diane sarcastically commented, "Oh gee, that's encouraging."

Confused, Jim asked, "just how do _you_ know all this?"

Still shocked, still holding the wallet, Blair was just barely able to stammer out, "she's FBI."

Sharon winced at the betrayed tone in Blair's voice, while Jim and Simon just gawked at her in shock.

All business, Diane asked, "can you get a full profile on my desk by morning?"

Not taking her eyes off of Blair, Sharon nodded. She then suggested, "oh, and make sure forensics gets good pictures of the crowd outside. I don't know if he's still here, but it's likely that he's going to be following the investigation closely."

Diane turned to Simon and suggested, "You'll probably want to do what she says."

Simon knew that the Commissioner's 'suggestions' were tantamount to orders, and he barked out directions to the first poor forensics photographer that happened to get in his way.

Diane concluded, "all right, I'll see all five of you in my office bright and early tomorrow, say, 8 a.m.?" Blair, Jim, Joel, Simon and Sharon all nodded. Diane continued, "all right, then. Let me go take the press monkey off poor Buchanon's back. Why _do_ you always stick him with that job anyway?"

Jim, Simon and Blair chuckled a little as the Commissioner left. They then turned their attention to Sharon. Defensively, she backed away from the three men a little, declaring, "look guys, I really am here as a favor to Diane, all right? I'm not looking to step on anybody's toes or declare Federal jurisdiction over this case or anything. I just want to see this guy hang, same as you do. I only came in on this side of the case when Diane called me tonight. If I find out that they want to make a federal case out of it - so to speak - then I'll probably ask for the case so that we don't have to deal with anyone other than the people we've already got. Is that a problem, gentlemen?"

Jim asked, "why didn't you tell us this before?"

Sharon smiled a little, and replied, "think about it, how do you guys usually think of FBI agents?" All three men guiltily shuffled their feet and looked around. Sharon continued, "Exactly. Bomb threats, for the time being, are a local matter. It only hits Federal jurisdiction when the bomb goes off or if the threats are to a government building. I wanted my hands in this case as little as possible. Hell, I even took vacation time yesterday. How I'm going to explain my presence here to my ASAC now, I'll never know."

Simon relaxed a little. It did seem to be that, for once, the FBI was on their side. And right now, they had a job to do. "I'm sure Diane will help with that in the morning. In the meantime, I believe we all have work to do?" Confident that the revelations between them were going to be dealt with later, the group split up, eager to finish the investigation and get some rest before their meeting with the Commissioner.

* * *

Socks watched his master skulk around the house in frustration. He had never seen the man so angry! The man was yelling at himself in anger and frustration, "I can't believe the last one didn't work! And that cop found it! I assumed they'd just think it was a sandbag or something and throw it away during the cleanup! How the hell did he figure out it was a bomb? Well, if at first you don't succeed, try, try again! Isn't that right, precious?" The man started to make kissing noises at his dog, and the dog wrinkled up his already heavily wrinkled face. He hated when his master did that.

The man took the last nineteen packages out of the bag and started ripping them open, dumping coffee grounds and potpourri onto the concrete floor. This time, he was going to have to be creative. Maybe Ted really did have something going there...

* * *

[Well, that went well,] thought Sharon. Once they had gotten out of the meeting with the Commissioner, Sharon gave Jim and Blair the morning off, so that she could go meet with her ASAC about the case. Luckily, he had already caught the news reports that morning, and was just about to assign someone to the case when she called. It didn't take much convincing to talk him into assigning her to the case, once she made it clear how many connections she had with the Cascade PD. Plus, the fact that she was already entered in the competition gave her the perfect cover. All she had to do was turn in a field report once a week (as always), and the case was hers. She breathed a sigh of relief when he told her she could work alone on this one. She hated working with a partner, especially since she hadn't had a real partner since Adrianna had left the Bureau to raise a family. [Better not think about that too much,] she signed, [especially since, for some odd unknown reason, you can't even seem to get a date. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that you're lucky if you get sleep, let alone free time?] The only condition her ASAC gave her was that if they don't catch the guy before the end of the Festival, then the Bureau takes over the task force and he takes over the case. In her eyes, that wasn't a problem at all. They had to catch this guy before the Festival was over. If they didn't, they might as well have the whole Bureau looking for him, because they won't find him.

Since selling her ASAC on the case took a lot less time than she had planned, Sharon decided to take advantage of the opportunity and hit Rainier library to do some research. She had heard about a new research computer the school just got with some rich guy's money, and she was dying to try it out. Maybe she would be able to find some new book about neuro-sensory connectivity hidden deep within the annals of the library that she hadn't discovered yet, just because the book didn't have 'senses' in the title.

After a half-hour wait (which was short, mostly because most of the undergrads in the school must have been in Florida that week), Sharon was finally able to get on the machine. She typed in 'senses', and waited. And waited. And waited.

After what seemed like forever, the computer came up with a list of over 1,000 books. Sharon's jaw dropped; she had thought there were only a few dozen books on the subject in the library. She printed out the rather long list and took it over to a study cubicle, hoping to maybe narrow things down slightly before she had to meet Blair and Jim at one.

She was encouraged to see that each time a book was referenced, the computer included a four-line excerpt from the book that included the key search word. This would be a great help in trying to narrow the search. She started scanning each page of titles, and came across an interesting excerpt. She read aloud, "...genetic predisposition toward enhanced senses...", and read the full excerpt to herself. [Fascinating,] she thought, [maybe I should check this out. Someone like this would make a great control subject.]

She found the book she was looking for in the fourth sub- basement, way in the back of the archives. After she finished sneezing from the dust, [Has anyone been back here since Kennedy was shot?], she found the book she was looking for, then groaned. It finally hit her that the book was talking about pre-civilized cultures, and was probably pretty useless to her work. What are the chances of finding someone from a pre-civilized culture in modern- day Cascade, anyway? It sounded like fascinating reading, though, and she grabbed the book to take home with her anyway. She looked at her watch, and sprinted toward the elevator, realizing that she was going to need to hurry if she was going to make it home in time to let in Blair and Jim for Jim's lessons. As she stopped to catch her breath in the elevator, she examined the book and realized it didn't have as much dust on it as the other volumes in the archives had had. The older volumes still had a sign-out card in the back, so she turned to it, wondering who else in the University had an interest in sensory research, since she knew she was the only Music major doing anything on it.

When she discovered that the last person to have checked out the book was a graduate anthropology student by the name of Blair Sandburg, she almost missed her floor.

* * *

Sharon was waiting for them when Blair and Jim came up the elevator to the loft. She set up Jim with the spectrographs, a microphone and a set of headphones, so that he could use the special tape she had made for him to rehearse his songs for the show.

[Now comes the hard part,] thought Sharon. She walked over to Blair and sat next to him at the kitchen table, where he had encamped himself under a mountain of exams. She stretched her arms over head and stated, "Jim seems to be doing really well with the songs we picked out yesterday."

Never taking his eyes off of the exam he was grading, Blair agreed. "Yeah. Maybe I don't give enough credit to the amount of time he spends singing in the shower every morning."

Much as she loved to get into a conversation about the acoustics of a nice hot shower, Sharon tried to keep her focus on the true topic at hand. [Or at least,] she thought, [the topic I'm trying to ease my way into.] She confessed, "I have a few ideas about how to help him overcome his stage fright, but I'm not sure if any of them are going to work. Any suggestions?"

Blair shook his head. "Not really. Why do you ask?"

Sharon shrugged, took a sip of ice water from the glass sitting on the table, and tried to keep her voice level as she simply commented, "I don't know. I guess I just thought that was what guides did for their Sentinels."

A vampire couldn't have drained the color from Blair's face as fast as that statement had. His grading pen dropped to the floor, forgotten, and he was sure he had stopped breathing for a minute. Noticing the extreme response of his partner, Jim turned the volume of the headphones down a bit and focused his hearing on their conversation to find out what was going on.

Still in shock, all Blair could ask was, "How did you-?"

Before he could even finish the sentence, Sharon asked him, "this book look familiar, Blair?"

He saw the old volume on the table, and weakly nodded, closing his eyes and absentmindedly rubbing the bridge of his nose where his glasses once sat. The book was one of the first that he had read when he first started his Sentinel research. He knew that most of the book dealt with the hierarchies of pre-civilized cultures, which didn't seem to fit in that well with her research. However, the one chapter that _was_ on Sentinels was enough to get him interested in doing Sentinel research for his original dissertation, so he asked her, "How much of it have you read?"

"Not much. Only enough to put two and two together when I saw your name on the sign-out list on the back. How many enhanced senses does he have?"

Absentmindedly, he replied, "At least the five physical ones. I've seen hints of an enhanced sixth sense, but since the existence of a sixth sense is debatable, I can't quite confirm or deny its plausibility." His defenses back up, he then asked, "Look, what do you want from us?"

Anticipating that reaction, she reassured him, "Nothing. I was at the library this morning, and I stumbled across the book in the process of gaining material for my own research. I suspected that Jim might be a Sentinel from what I remembered of watching the two of you work at the crime scene last night, but I knew I wouldn't be able to confirm it without talking to you first. Right now, I'm only thinking of this in terms of how to help the three of us catch that creep who blew up all those kids last night." She talked like there was no one else on the task force, which for some reason was almost instinctively reassuring to Blair. Curious, Sharon asked, "I'm not the first person to put two and two together, am I?"

Grimacing a little at the unpleasant memory, Blair replied, "No. There was an ex-CIA agent by the name of Lee Brackett-"

Sharon cut him off again. "Brackett knows about you two? Yeesh, say no more. I can see why you'd be so defensive of your secret." She shuddered involuntarily.

Now curious himself, Blair asked, "You know him?"

"Not personally, I just know enough _of_ him to know that the guy's a complete loony, and unbelievably dangerous. I can't believe they didn't find a reason to lock him up years ago."

"Actually, he's dead. He was killed while trying to come after us a while back."

Sharon sighed in relief. "Good riddance to bad rubbish, as they say. That leaves one less psycho for the world to worry about."

Blair's tone darkened for just a split second as he commented, "Great. That just leaves us with the psycho at hand."

At that point, Sharon noticed the unusual silence in the room. She glanced over to Jim, who had stopped rehearsing and seemed to be listening intently to the music. Blair, however, noticed the clenched jaw and glazed-over look in his eyes, and recognized immediately that the Sentinel was completely zoned out. [He was probably eavesdropping on our conversation when I nearly had a heart attack and must have zoned on something when he found out we were talking about him. I'll have to ask him what he remembers. And then give him a hard time for sticking his nose in other people's business. That is, when he snaps out of it.] He took Jim by the shoulders and gave him a gentle shake, bringing him back to reality. Jim looked over at his Guide, then remembered the last bits and pieces of the conversation he had zoned out on. Since Blair hadn't been tied up and gagged, she definitely wasn't psychotic, and since Blair didn't seem to be too angry or in any sort of self-sacrificing overprotective guide mode, he figured that Sharon could be trusted. One thing Jim had been learning from Blair was how to read people, a talent that the young anthropologist had in spades. The first person he had learned to read, consequently, was his guide, and he had learned to implicitly trust the younger man's judgment, especially when it came to anything related to his Sentinel abilities. If Blair thought Sharon could be trusted, she could be trusted. He looked directly into the eyes of his young guide and asked, "so what'd I miss, chief?"

Blair tried his very best to act solemn, like he was delivering news about the end of the world. "She knows, Jim."

Jim looked at Blair like he knew that the younger man was trying to drive him up a wall. "I know that, Sandburg. That much I figured out. So did the two of you come up with anything productive out of your little conversation?"

Blair shook his head.

By this point, Sharon was totally confused. She didn't understand much about this Sentinel stuff yet, and everything she had just witnessed had thrown her for a bit of a loop. She nudged Blair's shoulder to get his attention and asked, "Blair? What just happened here?"

Blair realized that what little reading Sharon had done probably didn't prepare her to see a zone-out in action. He had barely understood the concept himself until he had to save a zoned-out Jim from a speeding garbage truck. Blair looked up at Sharon and explained, "Jim sometimes gets so focused on using one of his 'senses' that his concentration goes on overdrive, and he almost loses touch with reality, to a degree. We call it a 'zone-out'."

Blair could see the light start to dance behind Sharon's blue eyes, and somehow he knew that she was up to something. She sat down and asked Jim, "Can you focus on one of your senses without 'zoning-out'?"

Jim replied, "Sure. The best way for me to avoid 'zoning- out' is actually to focus on more than one sense at the same time."

"So you can use, say, both your enhanced sight and your enhanced hearing at the same time?" Jim nodded, not quite sure where this was going. Sharon continued, "And if you can focus your senses in a heightened way, can you do the opposite? Can you desensitize them as well if you needed to?" Jim nodded again. Sharon looked at Blair, then at Jim, then excitedly declared, "I think I know how we can overcome your stage fright!"

Blair looked at Sharon for a moment with a quizzical statement on his face. Then, it hit him, and they started trading off phrases like they were finishing each other's thoughts:

"If we can work on distracting you so that your mind is focused on something else..."

"Like finding the bomber..."

"And make sure that you can still sing at the same time..."

"Then your mind will be so focused on trying to do three things at once..."

"You won't have time to get nervous."

Jim stopped them both. "Whoa, whoa guys! Slow down! How exactly do you propose to do this?"

Blair and Sharon looked at each other and shrugged. They hadn't quite figured that part out yet.

Jim laughed. Seeing this exchange between his vocal coach and his partner, it seemed that focusing on several things at once was probably Sharon's specialty.


	4. Chapter 4

It took Sid a couple of tries to climb over the junk in his office and get to the phone. "Sid's Messenger Service. Sid here."

"Hello Sid. I have a large number packages I need delivered to quite a few places today. Can your service take care of that for me?"

"Sure. What are they?"

"Oh, just some presents for friends."

"Nothing valuable, right? I don't want any sort of lawsuits on my hands if they get broke." He was still stinging from the last lawsuit, and was praying the cops weren't going to find out about the few 'under-the-counter' deliveries he was making in order to pay the bills.

"Oh, no Sid. No, there's no way I would sue you over something like this. I need to pay you in cash, is that all right?"

"No problem. Where can I send someone for pickup?"

"At the corner of Green and Mystic, there is a vacant lot. In that lot, you will find nineteen packages, wrapped in blue, each addressed and ready for delivery. A twentieth package, wrapped in red, will contain your money."

Even Sid could smell a setup when he heard one. And this call practically reeked of setup. "Hey, wait a minute, what's in these packages? Am I gonna have to explain this to a bunch of cops later? Cause I'm telling you now, I don't think they'll really buy this 'mystery man' bit, and there's _no_ way I'm going to take the fall for whatever it is you're asking me to pick up!"

Socks snarled in the background as his master reassured Sid, "Don't worry about the police, Sid, I've already taken care of them. As an added incentive, what if I told you that I was willing to tip you quite generously for prompt delivery of these packages?"

The words 'tip generously' got Sid's attention. "How generously?"

"One thousand dollars per package, cash up front. And you'll never hear from me again."

Nineteen thousand, cash? For nineteen thousand cash, he'd risk cops. He became much more polite to the most generous man on the other end of his line. "What time would you like me to pick up these packages, Sir?"

"I'm dropping the packages at the lot now. I'll come back again in two hours, and I'll expect to see them gone."

"And should I contact you to let you know that the packages have been delivered?"

The man smiled. "Don't worry, Sid. I'll know." Confident in the power of the greed consuming the gentleman on the other line, he closed the connection on his cellular phone. He took a deep breath, and inhaled the calming aroma of coffee coming from the red package in the seat next to him. He pulled up next to the vacant lot and muttered to himself, "Oh, don't worry, Sid. I've taken care of everything."

* * *

Blair grew slightly frustrated as he heard the doorbell ring for the fourth time. Since it was Sharon's place, he figured Sharon would get the door the first time it rang. The second time, he called out, "Sharon! Door!", all the while not looking up from the papers he had started grading. The 'consensus opinion' had been that the first thing Jim needed to do was learn the songs thoroughly, so Jim and Sharon had been spending the afternoon working on it. After the third ring, he looked up to see Jim, headphones on, going over "Layla" for what had to have been the tenth time. Much as he loved Eric Clapton, Blair was certain that he was probably not going to want to hear the song again for a long, long time after this case was over. Sharon was nowhere to be found for some reason, and so, after the fourth ring, he finally called out, to no one in particular, "Oh, all right! I'll get it!"

From what sounded to be some distance away, Sharon called out, "Blair, could you get that please?" Blair rolled his eyes, then realized Sharon had just taken a shower. Recently, it seemed, judging from the damp feel of the room. He wondered why Sharon would be taking a shower in the middle of the afternoon. Sighing, he went over to building intercom and asked, "who is it?"

"Delivery," was the only reply he received.

"Okay, I'll be right down," he replied. He took the elevator downstairs, and came up moments later with a large and rather heavy box, wrapped in blue paper. Sharon, who had just come out of the bathroom after the shower, came over to the kitchen table to inspect the package. She commented to Blair, "Funny-I wasn't expecting a delivery."

Between songs, Jim had noticed the unusual scents coming from the box the minute Blair had walked in the door with it. As he set the headphones aside and made his way to the kitchen table, he recognized the trace scent that had been working on his mind ever since he came in contact with the package.

C-4.

He screamed, "Get down!" to Sharon and Blair as he threw one of the kitchen chairs out of a window, and promptly followed it by the package. A high-pitched shriek filled his eardrums as he hit the deck himself, followed by the package's deafening midair explosion. He checked behind him, and noticed that Sharon had grabbed Blair and forced him to dive behind the couch for protection. They both slowly stood up, looking a little shell-shocked, but otherwise okay. The trio then looked out the window at the remains of Sharon's kitchen chair and the bomb that, were it not for Jim's Sentinel abilities, would have killed them all.

* * *

Down the street, Socks howled in concert with his owner, who was at first overjoyed that the three main bloodhounds on his tail were soon to be extinct, and then furious as he watched the masterpiece he had spent all morning working on being thrown out the window. How in the world could they have known what was in that box? He had carefully trained Socks to be able to detect C-4 and gunpowder from a mile away, and he tested each box under the mutt's nose before he had dropped them off with the delivery service. Full of dry dog food, all these boxes did was make Socks hungry; in some cases, the dumb dog drooled enough to almost rub the address off the box. So how could these three pick up on something that a dog's nose couldn't? [And more importantly, how do we hide these little treasures so he can't get them before they shine?] He yelled to his companion, "Come Socks, I guess it's back to the drawing board for us!"

* * *

Diane brought a large black garbage bag into the conference room with her as she stormed into the task force meeting Simon was conducting. She then unceremoniously dumped the contents of the bag into the center of the table: nineteen burned-out detonators.

By this point, all eyes in the room were on her. She looked each man in the room straight in the eye and announced, "Gentlemen-while you were in here discussing tactics, our 'friend' was at it again. Twenty of these were delivered, by messenger, to random addresses all over the city! Forensics was able to bring these back for us, 'as souvenirs'. We have _three_days_ until opening night, gentlemen! Simon, do we have _any_leads_at_all?!"

Simon had listened to her rant and rave before, so he waved off her question in favor of the shred of hope. "Did you say the packages were delivered _by_messenger_?"

Diane knew he would grab on to that, and replied, "Number 15 went to the dispatch office of the messenger service. The only man to speak to our unabomber died as soon as he opened the box. And Simon, you didn't answer my question."

Simon nodded. "We just got back the background checks from the computer. We found quite a few guys who matched at least half of the things on Sharon's profile, and I was just about to ask someone to have Julia call her when you walked in."

Diane replied, hesitantly, "It'll be kind of hard to get a hold of her right now, Simon."

Quizzically, Simon asked, "why?"

Considering what Blair had told her on the phone about what had happened, Diane had no deSire to go into great detail in front of the rest of the task force, but she had to give him at least part of the answer. "Bomb number twenty was addressed to her."

Before she could say anything else, Simon was grabbing his coat. Diane asked him, "where are you going, Simon?"

He abruptly replied, "the crime scene. You're taking me there _now_." He then turned to the other gentlemen in the room, announced, "meeting adjourned," and hustled the Commissioner out the door.

Diane spent the next ten minutes trying to catch up to Simon, until finally they were in the car, together, alone. He was about to start up the engine when Diane grabbed his hand. Simon looked into her eyes and was about to start yelling at her when she cut him off. "Simon, stop it! They're fine, all of them!"

Confused, Simon asked, "but you just said-"

Diane sighed, "yes, I did, and the bomb _was_ addressed to her. The reason I didn't want to get into it up there was that Jim was able to recognize the bomb and throw it out the window before anyone was seriously hurt. He got hit with a couple of shards of broken glass, so they're over at the hospital, getting him stitched up and giving their statements to a couple of uniforms. Now, if you'd take a couple of seconds to calm down a bit, maybe you could drive us to the hospital?"

Simon took a deep breath, then started the engine. As he was about to shift his car into drive, Diane added, "Oh, and one more thing..."

Simon turned to the Commissioner only to be met with an angry slap in the face. She continued, "I could care less how well we know each other _captain_, I am still the police Commissioner, and if you _ever_ speak to me like that in front of my men again I'll have you sucking dust balls in the evidence room until _long_ after you retire! Am I making myself clear?"

Simon shook off the impact of the hit and smiled inwardly. He loved it when she exercised her authority like that, especially when she was right. He had no business speaking to her like that, and, looking back, he knew it. As they pulled out of the parking lot, he replied, enthusiastically, "Yes ma'am!"

* * *

Simon opened the door for Diane once they had pulled into the hospital's parking lot, and they quickly walked into the chaotic Emergency Room. Once inside, it didn't take a Sentinel's hearing to hear Jim's objections to the doctor's cautious suggestion that they bring him upstairs and run some tests on him. "I don't need any tests!" insisted the Sentinel, "I told you, aside from the cuts on my arm, I'm fine!"

The young intern insisted on being just as stubborn as her patient. "Detective Ellison," she replied calmly for the fifth time, "you were within fifteen feet of a very loud explosion, with _nothing_ in between you and the bomb but a lot of quick-flying glass. Now, there's nothing right now that can force me to keep you here..."

Picking up on the last statement, Jim interrupted, "Great! Now, if you could finish bandaging up these cuts, I'll be on my way."

The intern looked to Blair and Sharon for help, as well as to the two newcomers who just walked in, but they only shrugged. Normally, friends and family members were her greatest ally at a time like this, always wanting to ensure the best for the health of the patient, but this time they seemed _almost_ as determined as the detective. [Oh well,] she thought, [guess you can't win 'em all.] She sighed in resignation, and grabbed a bandage from one of the multitude of drawers in the room. "Very well, detective." She then turned to his friends, hoping for a sign of agreement, and asked, "but if he shows any signs of a concussion, hearing loss, or of anything else, do you promise me that you'll bring him back right away?"

All four onlookers nodded in agreement. The intern taped together the last pieces of the bandage, and gave her patient a few last minute instructions. "You know the drill, detective. Keep it clean, and if there are any signs of infection, get back here pronto. If nothing shows up, I'll see you back here in a week to get these taken out, okay?" Jim nodded. She continued, "you realize, detective, that it's patients like you that make doctors like me want to go into private practice?"

Jim smiled, and joked back, "what, and miss all the fun?"

She smiled in spite of herself. The guy was stubborn as a mule, but he could definitely be charming. She nudged him on the other arm and declared, "okay, now out of here, all of you! I need to tend to patients who'll actually listen to me!" The group chuckled lightly as the intern went back to her duties and the rest of them turned around to leave.

Once outside, Sharon asked the question that had been bugging her since Ellison had called for her to hit the deck. "Jim, how did you know that there was a bomb in that package?"

Jim replied simply, "I smelled the C-4. Although, the guy was trying very hard to cover up the smell with something."

Diane chimed in, "Dog food. Forensics found residue from it all over the crime scenes."

Blair wanted to confirm what he had heard. "Crime scenes?"

Grimly, the Commissioner nodded. "Twenty bombs like the one you got were delivered all over the city. You three are the only ones to have survived."

For a few tense minutes, the group was silent. It was one thing to know that you barely made it out of a situation alive-it was quite another to know that scores of other people had just suffered the fate you had narrowly avoided. Sharon asked Diane, "this was the same guy, wasn't it?" Diane nodded again.

Blair asked the group, "and how long do we have until this competition again?"

Sharon replied, "Opening night's Saturday. Jim and I start competing on Monday afternoon."

[Only two more days?] Jim's jaw clenched in frustration. "Do we have _any_ leads?"

Diane's phone conveniently took that moment to ring. As she excused herself to answer it, Simon nodded in response to Blair's question. "We finished the background checks on the performers of the festival, and quite a few matched pieces of Sharon's profile."

Diane closed the connection on her cell phone and punched the hood of the nearest car. "That was the mayor. Three of the victims were some of the richest men in Cascade, and _all_ of them were campaign contributors. The press is having a _field_day_ with this, and they're breathing down his neck to get some answers. If you're up to it, we'd be willing to drive the three of you down to my office so you could review those files."

All three heads nodded in agreement. They _all_ wanted to catch this guy, now more than ever. If this was what he did for a warm-up, no one wanted to even think about what their 'unabomber' had planned for the Festival. Hopefully, they would be able to catch him before they had to find out.

* * *

Simon yawned, and looked again at his watch. It was after midnight, and they had only gone through half the profiles. [Looks like another night of almost no sleep,] he thought, [a few dark circles under the eyes to match the tuxes, I guess.]

Diane looked empathetically at Blair. Much as she knew they all wanted to catch the guy, it would be awfully hard to do it if they were unable to keep their eyes open. It was time for them to end this meeting. She address the group, "look, guys, we're not going to catch this guy tonight just by figuring out who fits the profile and who doesn't. Sharon, do you think this guy is smart enough to make his own plastique?"

Sharon shook her head. "He's smart, but he's no genius. The rest of the bomb was made with common materials. If he were going to the trouble of making his own plastique, he'd want to show off his 'creative genius', not bury it under dog food. It would be all we would find."

Diane replied, "Then I suggest we work on the C-4 angle. Simon, why don't you make some phone calls tomorrow, see if maybe we can find out if any black-market arms dealers have been spotted in the area lately. Throw Sharon's name around with the feds if you have to."

Sharon chimed in, "I'll make some calls as well, see if I can find anything out."

Diane smiled. Knowing Sharon's rather unique network of 'friends', she was looking forward to seeing what the young agent could come up with. "Sounds great to me, Share."

Jim added, "Sandburg and I could check out local warehouse stores, see if the names of any of their members match up to names on our list."

Diane nodded her approval. "Good idea. These roads have to intersect somewhere, people. It's going to be a matter of time before we find out who's standing at those crossroads. In the meantime, though, let's all go home and get some rest. We won't be able to catch anybody if we can't stay awake to do it."

The other members of the group voiced their approval and got up to leave. As Simon was about to walk out, though, Diane intercepted him. When she knew the others were out of earshot, she told Simon, "look, Simon, I just wanted to apologize for the way I treated you earlier.."

Simon cut him off, reassuring her, "don't worry about it. You were right, I was way out of line." A thought dawned on him, and he decided to take advantage of the opportunity. He continued, "however, if you'd like to discuss this over dinner, say, tomorrow night?"

Diane smiled, "I think I'd like that, Simon. See you at 7?"

Simon smiled back, "see you at 7", and left to catch up to the others.


	5. Chapter 5

The bullpen seemed unusually quiet, Jim thought. It wasn't a surprise; Simon had grabbed anyone he could from Major Crimes (as long as they could have their investigations put on hold for two weeks) to could be part of the task force, and reassigned the case load to those few who were left, 'just in case anything happens'. Which left a skeleton crew in the Major Crimes division for the next two weeks while the rest of the detectives were off chasing down needles in the various haystacks around Cascade. That gave the Sentinel a (for once) relatively quiet base of operations at his desk. He and his partner sat across from each other, laptops facing each other on the desks, trying to match the list of performers to the membership lists they had been given by the local warehouse club chains. Every time they came up with a match, they checked the address and income information first. That alone threw out most of the matches right off the bat: the majority of them had addresses in lower middle-class neighborhoods, and lower middle-class incomes to match. Each man still kept a running list of the matches, though - who knew what the others were going to come up with?

Suddenly, Blair's demeanor changed so fast only someone who knew him as well as Jim Ellison did would be able to pick up on it. He asked, "what is it, chief?"

Blair quickly waved for him to come around to his desk, stating, "Jim, come take a look at this." Jim quickly came around to look over Blair's shoulder as Blair continued, "This guy looks like a definite possibility. After all, how many guys do you know who list incomes over $100,000 a year-"

Jim completed his partner's train of thought instantly, "- and call Southtown home? Not many. At least, not many who are doing anything legal." He went back over to his own desk and picked up the phone.

* * *

Julia was busily typing a letter when the phone rang, "Commissioner McPherson's office, this is Julia."

"Julia? Jim Ellison."

"Hi Jim! How's the investigation going?"

"Actually, that's what I was calling about. I need you to get me all the information you can on a guy by the name of Mitch Patterson. Blair's e-mailing you what we have right about now." He looked over at his partner, who nodded, following his lead. She cut him off before he could continue, "Hang on, Jim - it's coming in now. Boy, I could see why you'd be suspicious of this guy. This really doesn't add up." She queried Patterson's name on the Internet, and Jim could almost hear the frown in her voice over the phone. "Bad news, Jim. Seems our Mr. Patterson here was one of the people killed in the mailbomb spree yesterday."

Blair took one look at his Sentinel and knew that they were one step closer to catching their unabomber. The step just wasn't in the direction either of them had been expecting. Jim's eyes opened in surprise for a minute, then his forehead tensed up in thought. "Really? Thanks Julia."

"No problem, Jim. Call me back if you need anything else." *click*

Jim hung up the phone and turned to his partner. "Do we still have that background information on the victims of the bombings yesterday?"

Blair nodded, and, as if out of thin air, he pulled a thick file from the disaster area known as his desk. "Right here. Why?"

"Seems our man Patterson got one of those exploding packages yesterday."

Blair mouthed a silent "Oh," then asked, "you think the victims yesterday might have something in common? Something that connected them enough in this guy's head to try to blow them all to bits?"

Jim nodded. As he picked up the phone, he added, "One person would best be able to tell us that, though." He dialed Sharon's cell-phone number.

* * *

The loud and frequent "ki-ya"s reverberated off the walls of the dojo. Sharon had found this school almost a year earlier, signing up as soon as she heard the Shi'han talk about his refreshingly well-rounded approach to the martial arts. After having studied at a similar school from the time she was a white belt until she passed her first degree black belt test, she bounced around to several different schools while she was at Quantico and after she had first been assigned to the Cascade field office. She had seen the inside of quite a few 'hard-core fighting' schools, and hated every single one of them. Seeing those schools made it an even greater honor when Shi'han Parker had asked her to teach whenever she was available. Having Jim and Blair taking the day to follow up on leads, she thought, would give her some free time, so she called and asked if they needed a teacher for the junior class. Now, hearing the insistent shrill of her cell-phone in the office, she wondered if she would ever have any free time again. She directed the student she was helping to continue to practice the form until she returned, then ran off to answer the phone. "Driver here."

"Sharon? It's Jim." He could pick up the sound of the teenagers in the background and her heavy, labored breathing. "Is this a bad time?"

"It could be worse." She knew, however, that he wouldn't call unless it were something only she could help them with. "What's up?"

"I think the victims of the mailbombings may have been connected somehow. Have you gotten a chance to take a look at the file yet?"

"I only skimmed it briefly. I didn't get enough of a chance to look at it to look for patterns yet. What did you find?"

"We had found someone in the list of performers who could have been a potential suspect, but he was killed yesterday in one of the mail bomb attacks. I figured we could use your help in going through the backgrounds of the victims."

"Okay. This class is over in half an hour, so can I meet you in, say, an hour and a half at the station?"

"Sounds good. See you then."

"See you." *click* She took a couple of deep breaths, deliberately put the case to the back of her mind for now, and returned to the main room and her awaiting students.

* * *

Jim had grabbed one of the empty interrogation rooms for the three of them to use to work on the case, and Sharon was grateful for the extra peace and quiet. She had quickly looked at general descriptions of the victims after they had made it back to Jim's place the night before, but was too tired to make anything out of them and had not looked at them since. The bomb had not gone off in her apartment, but had exploded close enough to it to completely destroy the windows facing the street, and take out a good chunk of the concrete wall as well. The repairs were going to cost her a fortune, to be sure, and for now, the place was unlivable. Jim had offered to let her camp out on the couch for the night, and although she sensed that it was more so he could keep an eye (or ear, or nose, or whatever it was that a Sentinel would do when he wanted to keep tabs on somebody) on her, she was too tired to think of any other ideas. She was sure that one of the targets was selected for a specific reason - the messenger service was most likely bombed solely for the purpose of covering the unabomber's tracks. She assumed from her initial review of the list of victims, however, that the remaining nineteen attacks were random. Now, sitting in that empty interrogation room, she hoped they could prove that assumption wrong, and truly find a connection between the victims that would provide some insight on why they were chosen, and consequently, shed some light on the identity of their bomber. She chuckled lightly as she remembered an old saying that precisely fit her mood at that moment, and she muttered to herself, "assumptions make an ass out of you yet again, eh, Driver?"

Behind her, the Sentinel laughed, having picked up every word. "I wouldn't say that."

Sharon jumped up, startled. If it weren't for the fact that she had gotten used to hearing the voices of the Sentinel and his young guide so quickly, she would probably have thrown him to the floor. As it was, it took her a couple of minutes to sit down and shake off what she called her 'red alert' response. "Man, Jim, you scared me half to death!"

Jim shrugged. "Sorry. Here's your tea. Peppermint, right?"

The way her stomach was starting to churn, that was _exactly_ what she needed. "Definitely. Thanks, Jim."

Jim sipped his coffee and looked over Sharon's shoulder at the victim profiles. "Find anything yet?"

"Not much. The attack on the messenger service was definitely not random - he used the bomb to cover his tracks, and make sure that the one guy who's talked to him didn't talk to us. As for the rest of them, I just don't know. There's one attack that's really bothering me, though."

"Which one is that?"

"The one on us. It seems too big a coincidence that our friend would send a bomb, addressed to me, by messenger, at the time the three of us would be there, two days after Diane asks me to help you on this case? Diane's been very good at keeping my name out of the papers, so if this guy got a hold of my name and address somehow, he's either tied very closely into the investigation somehow, or really thorough."

"My money's on really thorough," replied Jim, "The Commissioner's carefully reviewed everyone working on the task force, to make sure that each person is someone she trusts. It goes with your theory about him being loaded, though. He's probably got some high-placed connections, and when he threw some money around, he was able to get your name and address from that."

Sharon thought about that for a minute, then asked, "has Simon heard anything about the C-4 angle?"

Jim shook his head. "Apparently no one he talked to would give him an 'official' position on anything."

Sharon rolled her eyes. [Bureaucracy at the Bureau strikes again.] She then remembered a contact of hers who might be able to help them, and pulled out her cell phone.

* * *

A short-haired Asian man in a loud Hawaiian shirt answered the phone-that is, after nearly killing himself bumbling over several huge stacks of papers and computer equipment. "G'day mate. This is Jay?"

He heard the laugh of his best friend on the other line. She never could quite get over his accent-for years, that was his only motivation to not want to get rid of it. "Hey Share! What's up, dollface? Still trying to save the world, I take it?"

"As always, my friend, as always. Listen, Jay, I have a flavor to ask of you."

"Chocolate or Vanilla?"

"Rocky Road." Jay's tone immediately turned serious. The 'chocolate or vanilla' thing was an inside joke, but if she said 'rocky road', it meant that this was a _huge_ favor, probably business, and lives were most definitely at stake. "So who do you want me to kill for you?"

He could almost hear Sharon's smile over the phone. He always used that line to get her to lighten up, but also to remind her of his complete loyalty to her. "You know that guy who seems to want to blow up half the city?"

"How could I not notice? I've been using a set of giant oversized tongs to open my mail outside for the past two days."

"You been tappin' the pipes?"

"As always. What do you need?"

"Have you heard anything about someone who's been buying large quantities of the small stuff?"

"Like what?"

"TNT, plastique, detonators?"

"Actually, I did hear something about a rush on that kind of stuff. Let me see..." He checked his 'suspicious activity monitor' for the past month. "This is interesting...I got names of almost a dozen different buyers here. You want 'em?"

"Definitely." He heard in a muffled tone through the receiver, "Jim, do you have an e-mail address?"

'Jim' replied, "It's griffin ." He could almost hear Sharon arch an eyebrow at the obscure literary reference, where 'Jim' replied, "Blair's idea." Sharon repeated the name to Jay, adding, "how soon can you send them to me?"

In his best Herve Villachez, Jay replied, "sending dem right now, boss."

Sharon laughed at the awful impersonation. "Thanks for the help, Jay. I really appreciate it."

"Anytime. Call me if you need anything else." *click*

* * *

The second Sharon closed the connection with Jay, Jim declared, "I'll go tell Blair to print out the list of names the minute they come in."

Sharon stared after him in amazement. He had to have heard every word of _both_ sides of the conversation. "How does Blair get _any_ privacy living with you?"

Jim smiled, and replied, "ever hear of a white noise generator?"

Sharon laughed as Jim left, making a mental note to find out if Blair had an extra one she could borrow.

* * *

Sharon reviewed Jay's list of buyers, the list of 'matches' that Blair and Jim had provided her, and the list of blast victims, and an 'outline' pattern quickly fell into place. She reviewed what she 'saw' so far with the two men sitting around the table with her. "Okay, among our victims we have eleven underground explosive buyers, four bike messengers, three wealthy philanthropists, two FBI agents..."

Blair joked, "and a partridge in a pear tree?"

Sharon rolled her eyes at the statement, but briefly grinned. She did, after all, understand that sometimes her attempts at humor would work, sometimes they wouldn't, and it was the same thing for Blair. She then commented, "our task now is to find out what these people have in common."

Blair could almost see the gears going in Sharon's head. "You have a theory, I take it?"

Sharon replied, "For the most part, I think our guy was using this set of bombs to cover his tracks. The explosives buyers were probably his flunkies, the philanthropists may have been friends or relatives of his, we're probably his biggest headache at the moment, and the messenger service owner delivered our last set of surprises."

Jim asked, "and the other FBI agent?"

Sharon's tone darkened a bit as she replied, "she was a classmate of mine at Quantico, and worked with me in the Cascade field office. I'll bet she tipped our guy off as to where I lived." After a few tense moments, she declared, "Well, what's past is past. What we need to do now is find who these people have might have in common. Let's get this information to Simon so he can split these people up between the members of the task force. After that," she grinned evilly at Jim, "we can go back to my apartment, load my sound equipment into your truck, and set up shop at your loft." As Jim groaned, Sharon warned him, "remember, Jim, opening night of the Festival is in two days, which leaves us only tonight and tomorrow to practice. You have to be at your best if you have any hope of getting on that stage without losing it completely, which means _we_still_have_work_to_do_." She poked her finger at Jim's chest to emphasize those last few words.

Blair had to work very hard to suppress his laughter as they left the interrogation room, enjoying immensely how this beautiful, strong-willed young woman was so easily able to push Jim around.

* * *

[Amazing,] thought Blair, [we actually made it through two more days since the start of this and nothing else in Cascade has blown up. Or, at least, nothing has literally blown up.] Sharon had worked with Jim long into the night and all day Friday, finally declaring him 'ready to go on stage and _not_ make a public spectacle of himself'. She had even practiced a little herself, and hearing her incredible singing only served to endear her further to the young anthropologist. A chill ran up his spine as he remembered the way she sang "Someone to Watch Over Me". People always saw the song as the fantasies of an ingenue, and every time he had heard the song performed, it was usually sung in a dreamy, sometimes wistful tone. [If the judges are thinking like that when she starts singing,] he smiled to himself, [she's going to knock them right off their chairs.] When Sharon sang, he remembered, all he could think of was that this was a woman who had been burned by love and by life, and was trying to hang on to her last bit of faith that there was someone out there who could make her truly happy. He wondered idly if that could possibly be true to life.

They both found out soon enough, of course, that she was really just buttering them up so Jim wouldn't say no to her little 'field experiment'. She occasionally sang at a small out-of-the-way nightclub downtown, and knew the owners personally. It didn't take much convincing to let them let Jim sing on their stage. Convincing Jim himself, however, was another matter...

"You want me to do WHAT?!" "Come on, Jim. It'll be good practice for you. The place is really small," "How small?" "Seats about 75," "75! That'll be worse than the audition!" "What is _will_ be, Jim, is a chance for you to sing as yourself in front of a small group so that you'll have a successful experience to fall back on in case you have to sing at the finals, which, in case you forgot, is an audience of at least 2,000 people!" "She does have a point, Jim-" "STAY OUT OF THIS, SANDBURG!"

Finally, after a little sweet-talking (and a call from Commissioner McPherson endorsing the idea), Jim caved in. Sharon promised to premiere the "Someone to Watch Over Me" arrangement as a warm-up, which would get the crowd on their side, and then Jim would sing.

Blair ran his thumb over the label on his beer and took a look around the club. He hadn't been surprised to see Diane show up, but he _was_ surprised to see Simon on her arm, particularly since none of the three of them had said anything to him about the performance, or, for that matter, told Diane where they were going to be. When they grabbed a private table in the back, though, he wondered if something was up-something that was a bit more than 'moral support'. He mumbled to himself, "be careful when you play with fire, Simon..."

And then Deborah Reeves walked in. The minute Blair spotted her, the only thing he could think of was, [and speaking of fire...]. He definitely had not liked her at first, particularly with her 'pit-bull' attitude, but after they had solved the HTA fires, she had softened up considerably. [Going out with Jim a few times probably did a lot in that department,] he mused.

When she left to go spend some time in Denver, though, it was hard on Jim. Jim had understood, sure, but it still took some time for him to get over her. Blair waved to her to get her attention, and as she made her way over to his table, he wondered how Jim would react to seeing her tonight. [This is going to be more interesting than I thought.]

He shook off his musings and greeted her warmly. "Deborah, what a surprise! What are you doing here?"

"I just came in for a drink after work. How about you?"

"I have some friends who are singing here tonight. It's good to see you! I didn't know you were back in town."

Deborah replied, "actually, I just got back earlier this week. Denver was great, but no matter how difficult it is to face the memories that are here, Cascade is still my home. I needed to come back. So tell me, how is Jim?"

"Doing quite well, actually."

"Is he here tonight too?"

Blair had to suppress a laugh. He didn't know quite how to answer that one.

Fortunately, the lights flickered and dimmed before he got a chance, indicating that the show was about to start. All eyes turned to the stage as the club's owner got up and proudly introduced Crystal Starr. Blair clapped and hooted loudly as Sharon walked out on stage, who in turn rewarded him with a icy glare that could freeze the Towering Inferno. As soon as he shut up (which was quickly after her stare), she smiled, relaxed, greeted the crowd, and sat on the stool as music filled the small club.

She sang her first three songs with practiced ease - they were all standards for her, and she sang them passionately, like she had sung them all her life. After the applause for the last song, she looked over to Diane, who nodded her approval, smiling knowingly. Sharon then spoke to the crowd, "this next song I'm going to do has always been a favorite of mine. So, when a friend of mine came to me with an original arrangement of this song, I was a bit skeptical, since I've always preferred to use the original music to a song whenever possible. But the first time I heard this version, I fell in love with it. I hope you will, too." She looked to the owner, who always doubled as her sound guy, and he started the tape. As she began to sing a capella, it was like a warm breeze had blown through the room, and everyone relaxed. As the music eased into the song to join with her voice, the combination worked its magic in the small room. Couples drew closer to each other, whispering softly in each other's ears. Those who were there alone, drew into themselves for a while, either dreaming of their far away loves, dreaming of the loves they're waiting for, or dreaming of the love they hope to have someday. As the music faded away, it gently brought the audience out of its romantic trance, and they quickly responded with thunderous applause.


	6. Chapter 6

Backstage, Jim took another sip of ice water, and swallowed hard. He thought he couldn't be more nervous than he was before Sharon started her set, but then he heard "Someone to Watch Over Me" bring the house down. [Oh, she warmed up the crowd all right,] he thought, [and now I'm going to hit them like a bucket of ice cold bleach.] His heart started to race in his ears, his palms started to sweat...

And the next thing he noticed was Sharon shaking him out of a zone-out. Sharon took one look at his and rolled her eyes. "It's a good thing Blair's going to be with you backstage at the competition," she declared, "'cause I'd hate having to do this all the time. You got so overwhelmed by your nervousness that you zoned on it. I'm surprised your senses haven't gone haywire." She then directed Jim, "Don't worry - the owner's an ex-stand-up comic. He's stalling for us until you're ready to go. Listen to me - FORGET ABOUT THE CROWD. When you get out on stage, focus on Blair, and take a couple of deep breaths to relax. He's sitting in the back of the room, so when you're on stage, if you feel yourself starting to get nervous, focus back on him. If you sing in his direction, everyone will be able to hear you just fine. After you relax, nod to the owner behind the bar, and he'll start the music. Focus on that as much as you can without zoning, and try to visualize yourself being back at the loft yesterday during rehearsal. When the song's done, I'll come back out, we can take the bow together, I'll sing a couple more songs, and that will be that. Think you can handle it?" Jim nodded. She then kissed Jim on the cheek, lightly enough so that he wouldn't get her lipstick on his cheek, and whispered in his ear, "then break a leg, kid!"

She turned him around to look toward the stage, and he had to blink a couple of times. She was right, his senses were going haywire. It took a couple of seconds to be able to adjust his focus for the lights on the stage, and adjust his hearing to hear the guy at the microphone. Everything kicked in again just in time to hear Jack, the bar's owner, announce to the crowd, "ladies and gentlemen, Jim Ellison!" As Jim nervously stepped onto the stage, Jack backed away from the mike and went over to shake Jim's hand. Jack then leaned in and told him, "my wife's behind the bar. Tape's cued and ready for you. Break a leg!" Jack then made his way offstage, and Jim turned to face the crowd. He scanned the room for the face of his guide, and, finding him in the back of the room, he instinctively relaxed. He was then able to look briefly at the other faces in the room, when he noticed Deborah Reeves sitting next to his partner. Jim sat on the stool near the mike and smiled. This was going to be easier than he thought. He nodded to the older woman behind the bar, who started the music. He then started snapping his fingers to the well-known Motown music, and the crowd eagerly followed. His timing was perfect as he sang "My Girl" with the ease of a pro, working the crowd as much as he needed to, but not taking his eyes off Deborah otherwise. Deborah, in turn, smiled broadly, her eyes lighting up the rest of her face. Jim was milking the encouragement for all it was worth - some of the more inebriated members of the audience felt comfortable enough to even start singing with him on the chorus, and by the final round of the chorus, he was encouraging the entire audience to join him. Sharon, who had made it to the back to sit next to Blair, smiled broadly. Their plan to cure Jim of any perceived 'Stage Fright' worked like a charm. [Kiss that excuse goodbye, Ellison!] thought Sharon.

Jim finished the song, and received a chorus of loud, raucous, enthusiastic applause in response. Jim nodded his head in a simple bow, then turned to hurry off the stage. However, the crowd had other ideas, and they screamed loudly for an encore. Jim looked over at his 'support table', and found that they were the loudest of the bunch. He sat back down on the stool, and shrugged in happily resigned defeat. [Looks like I'm not getting off this stage for a while,] he thought.

He nodded over to Mike and his wife behind the bar, who laughed and pressed play again on the recorder. He ran through his other three 'Festival' songs, including "Layla", before the crowd finally let him get off the stage. As the atmosphere in the club returned to lightly played jazz music and quiet conversation, he made his way back to the table where Blair, Sharon and Deborah were now sitting, and sat next to Deborah. They had already ordered him a beer, and each of them offered him their congratulations on a great show. Sharon added, "I don't think you're going to have any problems when we compete on Monday. If you sing then like you sang up there tonight, you're going to do great."

Confused, Deborah asked Jim, "Wait a minute, did she say compete?"

Blair replied, "Yeah. Jim's signed up for Cascade of Stars next week. Gonna be the first cop ever to win the male vocalist category." He smiled and clinked beer bottles with Jim in a toast.

Jim then added modestly, "Please. I'll be lucky if I get past the first round." He then turned to Deborah and added with great affection, "it's good to see you again, Deborah. When did you get back in town?"

"Earlier this week."

Intrigued by the tone in Jim's voice, Sharon asked, low enough for only the Sentinel to hear, "so, it this the lady friend-?" Jim subtly nodded his head and smiled as he listened to Deborah continue, "good thing, too." Deborah took a gulp of her beer and commented to the group, "the night I got back I got called in for an explosion at a movie theater. Some nutcase planted ten bombs behind the screen. Can you believe that? And then he sent out twenty mailbombs the next day. It's been unreal."

The other three members of the table shifted nervously in their seats. Deborah knew the looks on their faces, and asked them, "don't tell me-you guys are investigating this one?"

Jim replied, "Yeah, actually. That's why I'm competing at the Festival. We think that's where the bomber's going to strike next."

Concerned, she turned to Jim and asked him, "are you sure about that?"

Grimly, Jim nodded. "We," motioning to the other three around the table, "have to go in and stop him before he does anything worse."

Calmly, Deborah then asked the group, "room on this team for one more?"

Jim was about to voice his objections when Deborah cut him off. "I know what you're going to say, Ellison, and you can forget it. You can't expect me to see what he did to those kids and not want to do something about it. Now you _know_ I can hold my own in an investigation. Is there some reason why I can't act as, say, Sharon's manager?"

Jim knew full well when Deborah was in 'pit bull' mode, and he knew there was no way to stop her. "All right, we'll talk to Simon in the morning."

"Or you _could_ talk to me now," replied a deep, familiar voice. The four people at the table turned to look behind Jim and saw Simon standing arm-in-arm in a rather cozy pose with Commissioner McPherson. He continued, "we just wanted to come over and congratulate you two on a great show tonight."

Deborah greeted the pair standing next to her, "Captain, Commissioner. It's good to see you again."

Simon replied, "it's good to see you too. And you _are_ welcome to work with us on this case. I'll contact your captain tomorrow. We need all the help we can get."

"Thank you, captain."

"Please, when we're off duty, call me Simon." Diane then addressed the group, "well, that settles that. Goodnight, folks. The _captain_ and I need to get home." The emphasis on _captain_ was as flirtatious as any of them had ever seen the Commissioner get, and it was very hard to keep a straight face.

Simon apologized, quickly adding, "she's blasted out of her skull, so I'm driving her home. Good night, all. Again, congratulations you guys." He then turned to his boss, who was now his inebriated charge. "Come on, Diane-let's get you out of here."

The last words they heard the Commissioner speak were, "your place or mine, handsome?"

Jim heard Simon's audible sigh as the couple walked out the door.

It was only then that the group at the table allowed themselves to burst out laughing.

* * *

Sharon couldn't sleep - not like she had expected to. A great performance always did that to her. And there had been two tonight. It had taken years of martial arts training for her to have the strength to face her fears and overcome her stage fright, and yet Jim was able to get past it in a week. She couldn't have been prouder of Jim. She smiled at how well Blair's plan worked in putting his partner at ease on stage. [The whole Sentinel-Guide relationship was probably a big factor in that too,] she thought, [I wonder how the whole thing really works. I'll have to ask Blair about it sometime.] But, now was not the time to be distracted by thoughts of academia.

[Now's the time to catch the jerk who tried to blow up my apartment.]

Everyone on Simon's end of the task force had spent the day conducting interviews with anyone and everyone who had had a connection to the victims. The second their reports were finished, they were taken from their desks and put in a sealed case in the captain's office, and Simon personally delivered the case to the loft just before they left for the club. Now, with the world sleeping peacefully below her, she opened the case and began to read through the files.

Four hours later, she put down the fortieth witness statement and rubbed her temples. Throughout the reports, six names kept coming up. One name matched the warehouse club list, and one the list of rejected contestants for the festival. She wished she had more to go on.

[He's going to kill me for calling this late, but...] She looked out the window at the glorious sunrise, and started to daydream about her morning workouts, and, consequently, her loft windows. Then she remembered her call. [Correction, he's going to kill me for calling this early...] She dialed a number she knew as well as her own.

After five rings, a very sleepy voice answered in return, "if this isn't a beautiful woman, I'm hanging up."

She decided to play with him a little. "Good! Then I guess you'll be willing to do whatever I ask?"

"Share. Only you would call me at," she heard him fumble for his alarm clock, "6 a.m. on a Saturday. What do you want?"

"I need you to check on a couple of names for me."

"And this is too hard for Cascade PD?"

"No, but Jay -"

"I know, I know, I can get you more than they ever could." Now fully awake, she heard him lay down the receiver and pull some thing up to his bed, which she could only assume was his laptop. Calmly, he asked her, "okay, now what are their names?" She gave him the list and the phone number to the loft, which he dutifully typed into the computer, replying, "I'll run the check and get back to you," when he was finished.

She smiled. "Thanks, Jay-"

"I know, I know. Just catch this guy, okay? God, if I ever cashed in on the number of times you said you owed me one..."*click*

Sharon smiled as she hung up the phone, and returned to the stack of statements.

* * *

One hour later, the phone rang. Sharon had the phone close to her, and picked it up on the first ring, not wanting to awaken the other two men, who seemed to still be trying to sleep in. It could only be one person, anyway. "Okay, Jay, whad'ya got?"

"How did you know it was me?"

"I'm psychic, now spill!"

"Okay, Okay! God, you _are_ testy when you don't get sleep! Anyway, your instincts were right, as usual. This is _big_. Once I traced back the names, I found out that they were all aliases for the same guy."

She had to suppress a yell for joy that would have easily woken up her two 'roommates'. There was little need, though, as she watched a boxers-and-t-shirt-clad Jim descended the stairs. [Must've heard the phone ring,] thought Sharon. "Well, don't keep me in suspense, Jay. Who is he?"

"Name's Alexander Josef Grenofsky-goes by the stage name of A.J. Green usually. His ancestry goes back to Russian nobility; his family was one of the few to escape the communist revolution with _all_ their assets intact, if you know what I mean. Taught in the best schools, knows six languages, traveled Europe as a kid, housed in the best sanitariums-"

"Excuse me?"

"Yep, A.J. here's nuttier than fruitcake. Housed involuntarily by his parents until the age of 18, when the parents died without a will, and he became sole heir to the family fortune. He checked himself out of that place soon after that."

"What was the diagnosis?"

"Psychotic episodes, combined with hallucinations and delusions of grandeur. Real whacko, but apparently he was smart enough to convince the doctors that he was all right. Anyway, reports of his whereabouts are sketchy for years after the hospital, but he often popped up under any of the names you gave me."

"Do you have a location for him in Cascade?"

"Nope. Unfortunately none of the aliases checked out in that department. I even checked the address used for the warehouse club. It's a Boston Market restaurant. If this is your guy, I haven't a clue where he is."

She sighed deeply, then decided she better let her friend get some rest. There were people who needed to know this information. "E-mail me the profile to the same address as before as soon as you can, then get some rest, okay?"

Jay yawned, then reluctantly agreed, "Yeah, I could probably use a couple of hours zzz's. What about you?"

"Oh, I'll just grab the back room at the dojo for a while and work off my stress after this is all over. This is our best chance to get this guy, and I'll be damned if I'm the one who drops the ball this time. Thanks again for your help."

Jay yawned again. "Anytime, Share. Later." *click*

As she hung up the phone with Jay, she turned to see Blair come out of hibernation, looking to get some coffee and start the day. Jim took one look at her and asked, "Didn't you get _any_ sleep last night?"

"Nope. Spent the night looking over statements. Listen, can you guys get your e-mail from here, or do we need to go over to the station?"

Blair replied, "We can get it from here, off my laptop. Why?"

Sharon calmly announced, "I think I found us a prime suspect. Jay's sending me the information on him now."

* * *

Once the three of them got a chance to read over the information from Jay, Jim immediately called Simon and asked him to get a task force meeting together. Simon then called Diane, who called Julia, and together they were able to assemble the task force in record time. They briefed the team (which now was forced (courtesy of Sharon's ASAC) to include three dozen plainclothes FBI agents) handed out Jay's computer-enhanced photo of A.J. Green, and each person went off to their respective assignments for the day.

Now, as she watched the outdoor concert that marked the beginning of the Festival, she wondered idly why they called her co-workers 'undercover' FBI agents. Twelve men in dark wool suits in the middle of a 'casual' outdoor concert were hardly inconspicuous. But, if one of them happened to spot their Mr. Green, they could be wearing Mardi Gras outfits for all she cared, their presence would still be worthwhile.

* * *

This being the headline event for the day, the primary investigative team (Jim, Blair, Deborah, and herself, along with one of the eight backup squads), were stationed in various places around the concert site. All were in agreement that if Green were going to strike anywhere, this would be probably be it. In the command truck, Simon opened up the radio frequency and asked the team to do a mike check. As sixteen voices answered him in response, he asked, "Okay guys, anything yet?"

He heard fifteen "no"s come back in response. It was the one person who didn't say no that worried him. "Jim? Jim?"

* * *

Just as Jim was about to tell Simon that he saw no sign of Green, something in the corner of his eye caught his attention: a tall man, pale, unusually thin, with dark slicked-back hair and dark sunglasses. Jim focused on him for a bit as he removed his glasses, and noticed that the man had green eyes and was holding what looked to be a small cellular phone, except for the fact that the antenna was a couple of inches too long. In his dark suit, the concertgoers might have mistaken him for one of the FBI agents, except for the fact that he was walking a black pitbull with white paws.

The Sentinel, however, knew exactly who it was.

"Green," he muttered under his breath. He then took off to catch him, just barely giving Blair enough time to yell into the mike, "Simon, I think Jim's just found Green. He's heading south toward Mariner's stadium!" and take off after his partner.


	7. Chapter 7

Sharon and Deborah were on the far side of the concert site when Blair's announcement came over everyone's headsets. They sprinted across the open field, hoping that they would be able to get there in time to be of some help to Jim and Blair.

And praying that one of them could catch this guy before he killed anyone else.

* * *

The feds laughed as they heard the 'police consultant' say that they found Green when Agent Martinez was ten feet from that local Ellison and he hadn't seen a thing.

However, they changed their minds when they saw Agent Driver sprinting the field at top speed. No one knew where she got her 'instincts' from, but if she thought something was up, it was up. They drew their guns and quickly followed.

* * *

"Catch me, catch me if you can..."

Alex smiled as he used his zoom glasses to turn around and catch a glimpse of the armada of cops and FBI agents chasing him. Of course, he could always have left them in there, but once that boar Ellison saw him he figured he might as well draw them out and let them watch this one.

They'll get their chance soon enough.

* * *

He was close now, he could feel it. He hadn't taken his eyes off of Green from the moment he spotted him. Blair was following close, as always. He was even dimly aware of hearing Sharon and Deborah coming up behind them.

And then he heard it.

It sounded like a gun that had fired twenty-eight times. To anyone else, it would have been simply one loud explosion, but his instincts kicked in and his hearing was quickly able to distinguish the sequential pattern of the sounds.

He chanced turning back for a brief second, and saw that the grandstand had collapsed, erupting in smoke and flames.

Furious, he turned back to focus again on his prey, but the chaos of the crowd had swallowed him up.

A.J. Green had vanished.

* * *

Three stories underground, in an abandoned parking structure near the stadium, Alex laughed at those fools who had even thought to give chase. [Think they'll arrest me, do they?] As he walked to his car, he finished the childhood rhyme that he had thought of earlier...

"can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man!"

* * *

Blair, Sharon and Deborah finally caught up to Jim just as he realized that Green was gone. To say Jim went ballistic would have been, well, putting it mildly. He yelled a string of curses that Blair figured Jim hadn't used since his army days, then started swinging his arm through the air in frustration. Sharon blocked his arm before he was able to hurt anybody, then Blair grabbed him by the shoulders and tried to get him to calm down. "Jim, Jim, calm down man! It's not going to do you or anybody else any good to get like this."

Jim was still thinking about Green. "I can't believe he got away, Chief! One minute, he was ten feet away from me and the next he was gone! It's like he vanished into thin air or something."

"Okay, Jim, nothing vanishes into thin air. Where was he last?"

Jim tried to move through the crowd to the last place he saw Green, but the rush of people trying to get past them was becoming too great. Jim sighed in resignation. "It's no use, chief. I can't track anything in this mess."

As if on cue, Jim's cell phone rang. Jim winced-whoever this was, this was not going to be good.

* * *

As the four of them returned to the concert site, the only thing that Blair could compare the sight to was a war zone. Dozens of people were wandering aimlessly, some of the still covered in the blood of loved ones. Dozens more lie on the ground, screaming in pain from their injuries. The rest had lost their ability to ever speak again the minute A.J. Green pressed that button. Jim heard the ambulance Sirens coming from all directions, and he silently hoped they would hurry. The press, who had come to cover the start of the Festival and the threat of a possible strike by the "Mad Bomber of Cascade", were swarming around the scene like locusts, viewing every bit of carnage as the greatest journalistic 'feast' they could ever stumble upon.

Simon Banks marched through this hell like it was the bullpen of the Major Crimes office. Apparently he had been helping the able-bodied survivors tend to those wounded who still had a chance of surviving. The blood that covered his clothes and the fury in his eyes were unmistakable. Seeing the tirade that was coming, Deborah excused herself and made her way over to the rubble that was once the grandstand to talk with Taggart and the other fire department people on the scene.

Blair asked Simon a casual, "how's it going, Simon?", and was rewarded back with "we've got ten thousand people who didn't know until about ten minutes ago that they were sitting in a minefield HOW DO YOU THINK IT'S GOING?! And can someone tell me why I see the four of you here and our friend Mr. Green is still wandering the streets of Cascade? And can you tell me how, with _all_ the security we had here, this clown could just waltz in here, plant bombs all over this field _and_ the grandstand, and walk out like he was on a Sunday stroll?" Since those was the question none of them wanted to answer, they all looked around nervously, not wanting to meet the bloodied and furious captain eye-to-eye.

Sharon noticed one of the ground craters that the bombs had made all over the park, and her natural curiosity kicked in. [How indeed,] she thought, [how indeed.] Her mind took its focus off of Simon and directed her over to the bomb site. She barely heard Simon scream behind her, "just a minute, I'm not finished with you yet!" and Blair back her up, "wait a second, Simon. I think she might be on to something." Once at the site, she knelt down and picked up one of the clumps of grass that the blast has thrown over a fifteen- foot radius. Something just didn't click. The security team had gotten there before the crowd, and the field had been a perfect blanket of green - no holes, and no large, scattered patches of black dirt. So how did he plant these without being detected? She called over to the guys, who were still being scapegoated by Simon, "Jim, Blair, could you come over here for a minute?"

As the three men jogged over to the blast site where she was standing, Sharon asked, "what do you make of this?" and handed the clump of grass to Jim.

Glancing over at Blair for a second, Jim calmed himself and opened up his senses. His head was swimming for a few seconds until Blair directed him to filter out the chaos so he could pick up anything 'unusual'. [Like there's anything normal about this,] he thought. Then he felt the slight waxiness of the grass in his hand, and his jaw clenched even more than usual. He looked around, and saw that the clumps thrown by the bombs were a slightly brighter shade of green than the grass surrounding them. He exclaimed in surprise, "Astroturf."

Sharon smiled for an almost undetectable split second, her suspicions confirmed. Blair and Simon, on the other hand, just looked at the two of them in confusion. Sharon explained, "Simon, when you mentioned the security detail, my mind flashed back to when we first got here this morning, and I realized something. The grass in this field was perfect - too perfect. He probably came here one night, sometime earlier this week, dug these holes in the ground, planted the bombs, and covered them with Astroturf, so they wouldn't be detectable."

Jim drew in a deep breath, and picked up an unusual scent from the bomb site. "He didn't just cover them with the Astroturf," Jim added, "he added coffee ground to the soil."

Blair thought out loud, "to throw off bomb-sniffing dogs should we happen to think of sending them in in advance?"

Sharon replied, "exactly. He's been planning this one for a long time. And we almost had him, too!" She pounded her fist against a small tree in frustration. It was the last straw for the poor sapling, though, and it broke in two, forcing Blair to jump five feet out of the way.

Innocently, Blair asked, "so what do we do now?"

Sharon replied to no one in particular, "we have to be totally prepared for Monday night - it's our last chance to catch him. It's _my_ last chance."

Absentmindedly, the heads of all three men nodded in agreement.

* * *

Blair cursed the broken elevator as he climbed the stairs in the pitch black stairwell to Sharon's fifth floor loft. After they had wrapped up the investigation of the concert bombing, Sharon mumbled something about "..needing to let off some steam.." and took off. No one thought anything of it until around one o'clock in the morning, when Jim and Blair were about to turn in and Blair noticed that Sharon hadn't come back. Jim wanted to shrug it off and go to bed, but Blair's persistence and concern for her won out and he took off. As he walked toward her apartment and climbed those infernal stairs, Sharon's last comment to them played at his thoughts. _Her_ 'last chance'? What did she mean by that? And the way she punched that tree startled him, too. Up to that point, she had been the picture of calm during the investigation; focused, sure, but everyone was. That little outburst, though, made him realize just how little he knew about this woman he had come to respect so much. Exactly what was she capable of? [If that tree had been Green...]

He finally made his way to the fifth floor, and stopped to take a breather. As he stopped to knock, he realized that the door was slightly ajar, and he heard the unmistakable sounds of a fight inside. Wishing for once in his life that he was actually carrying a gun, he slipped into the loft as quietly as he could to see what was going on...

And found Sharon in her workout area, wearing a tank top and shorts, literally beating the stuffing out of her punching bag. He relaxed immediately. The moonlight illuminated her face in such a way that he could tell just how fierce her concentration was. [She probably didn't even notice me come in,] he thought. He tried to edge himself closer to the workout area, when he was greeted with an abrupt, "oh, just come on in and sit down, Blair."

[So she did notice,] he thought. He took off his jacked and sat down on the floor near the workout area, using the jacket to brush away one of the piles of glass shards she must have swept off of the mats before her workout. She cautioned him, "try not to get any of that glass on the mats, okay?", after which he glanced at her feet and realized that she was barefoot. As carefully as he could in the dim light of the full moon, he checked for any glass shards around him on the mat and sat down.

Casually, he asked her, "so, do you do this often?"

In between kicks, she replied, "do what?"

"Kick the stuffing out of your punching bag in a pitch dark apartment in the middle of the night?"

"It's not that -" as she was about to say 'late', she looked at her watch. It was after 1:30 in the morning. She had been at the apartment for almost seven hours. With the cleaning and the work she had done on the short staff and the nunchakus, she had barely noticed the time pass. Defensively, she added, "and what business is it of yours anyway?"

"I was worried. The way you ran off at the blast site-"

"You thought I would take off the head of the next person who looked at me the wrong way?"

Even in the dim moonlight, she could see Blair's gentle smile. "Yeah." She took a deep breath, and replied, "you shouldn't have come Blair," then started throwing another barrage of kicks and punches at the bag.

Blair would have tried to stop her and get her to listen, except for the fact that the obvious power that was going into those kicks and punches probably would knock him cold if any part of his body got in contact with them. So he sat on his jacket at the edge of the mats and declared, "you shouldn't be alone right now."

"I can take care of myself," she replied, as she landed a spinning roundhouse kick to the punching dummy's knees.

"That's not what I meant." He paused for a minute, then asked, "why did you say that this is _your_ last chance to catch Green?"

She picked up the short staff and started going after the dummy with it. "If we don't catch Green by the end of the Festival, I'm leaving the Bureau."

As Blair tried to recover from his surprise at what seemed to be such an absurd statement, Sharon continued, "Did I ever tell you about my family?"

Blair shook his head, "no, you never did."

"I'm the seventh of nine children. I never asked my half- sisters their exact ages, but I could bet easily that my oldest half-sister is about 25 years older than me. I know she's within five years of my mom's age. Between all of my half-sisters I have fifteen nieces and nephews."

Blair smiled, remembering his own lonely childhood. "It must be nice to come from such a big family."

Sharon replied, "well, it does have its moments. Anyway, I got a hold of the file on the victims of the movie theater bombing, and I stumbled across one of the victim's pictures. He was a dead ringer for my oldest nephew."

Blair thought for a minute of how he would feel if he found a victim photo and the woman looked like Naomi. "That must have been hard on you."

"It was hell, especially since the sister of this nephew passed away a few years ago. I pictured all those parents who had to go through what my half-sister went through when my niece died. All of my energies went into catching this guy-everything I did had no meaning behind it unless it was one step closer to finding Green. And when we lost him in that crowd today-"

Blair nodded his agreement. Judging from Jim's emotional reaction earlier in the day, they were all feeling the same frustration.

Sharon dropped the staff and started kicking the bag again. "Sometimes Diane looks to me like I'm one of her psychics; like I can pick up one of those detonators and tell her who this guy is, where he is, why he does what he does and when he plans to strike next. But I'm not!" She threw a side kick at the bag with all the frustration she had in her. It sent the bag back a few feet, and she had to catch and steady the bag before she could continue. "I just look at the evidence and try to figure out what type of person did it and why, same as you guys do." As she landed three solid kicks to the dummy's 'chest', she emphasized, "I just-look at it-from a different angle."

The exhaustion of the workout finally catching up with her, Sharon crumbled to the ground, almost passing out. Blair rushed to her side, and instead of pushing him away like he expected her to do, she clung to him like a scared child. He pushed back the loose strands of sweat-soaked hair from her face as she confessed, "that whole thing today was a lucky break. I'm scared we won't get another opportunity like that at the Mystic Center."

He held her a little tighter, trying to comfort her. He started to realize that quite a few tears were mixed in with the sweat from the past hours. She continued, "I wish I really was psychic, you know? Then at least I'd have some clue as to what Green's next move is going to be."

Blair reassured her, "but you're not. None of us is. You're just doing the best job you can, and between you and Jim, I'm sure that's going to be more than enough." It seemed like she was trying to shoulder the burden of the responsibility for the entire investigation herself, and it would be a cold day in Hell before he'd let her get away with that.

She choked back a few hard tears. "You seem to have a lot of faith in your partner."

Blair tilted her chin upward so she could look at her face. It struck him again how young she looked. [How young she is,] he reminded himself. She acted so much like Jim sometimes that he could easily forget that they were around the same age. With every ounce of conviction he had, he looked into her eyes and stated, "Share, I have a lot of faith in both of you." He kissed her gently, as if he needed to seal that statement as fact.

She returned the kiss, but then her body's need for rest decided to override anything else she might have been feeling at the moment, and she fell asleep in his arms. Smiling, he whispered, "it's a good thing the competition doesn't start until Monday. I have a feeling you're going to have a hard time waking up tomorrow."

Even asleep, she smiled and snuggled into his arms a little more.

* * *

It took some effort, but he finally got her up off the mats and carried her to her couch, which was relatively free of the glass from the explosion. Since there was no way she was going to be able to get her back to the loft, he rummaged around for a blanket, and after finding one, covered her with it. He kissed her lightly on the forehead, then went to see if the bed was in any condition to be slept in. After shaking the glass shards off to the floor on the other side of the bed, he took off his shoes and climbed in. As he drifted off to sleep, he decided he would call Jim and let him know what's going on...in the morning.

* * *

After hearing about Sharon's little 'outburst' at the blast site, Diane went over to Jim's loft first thing on Sunday morning, peppermint tea and sausage biscuits in hand. She wasn't surprised to see Jim answer the door, but she was a little surprised to hear that Sharon hadn't come back to the loft that night. She was even _more_ surprised to hear that Blair went out to look for her, and hadn't come home either. Jim was growing concerned, suspecting foul play on the part of their friend, A.J. Green, and initially Diane agreed with him. Then mysteriously, she thought for a minute, and smiled. "I think I have an idea of where Sharon is, and where the Professor might be too. Come on."

They took her Jeep and drove over to Sharon's apartment. As he got out, Jim looked up at the blown-out windows on the fifth floor, but could see or hear no signs of a struggle. Diane got out of the car, grabbing the bag with breakfast in it, and smiled at Jim's show of concern for his partner. They made their way to the apartment and found Sharon on the couch and Blair in the bed, both still fully clothed and sound asleep. Diane and Jim glanced at each other; Jim motioning that he would go wake up Blair, and Diane motioning that she would take care of Sharon.

The Commissioner sat on the edge of the bed and gently tapped the young agent on the shoulder, whispering, "Share! Time to get up Share!"

Sharon woke up slowly, blinked against the bright morning light, then turned her head into her pillow and groaned loudly. Every move she made hurt. "Do I have to?" Diane's eyes widened a bit at her friend's obvious discomfort. "Jeez, Share, how long did you work out?" The muffled response came back, "oh, about five hours or so. After a while I just lost track." Diane drew in a deep breath, released it, and muttered, "angst before the storm, I take it?" She saw the pillow move up and down, and assumed it was a nod of affirmation. Five hours? That had to be a record. How long had _this_ one been building up? "And Blair? How long was he here?" "Only the last half-hour or so. Right now he's probably thinking I'll jump off a bridge of something if we don't close this case." Diane patted Share on her visible shoulder and declared, "you just get some rest, dear. I'll bring you some tea and Aleve." "And biscuits?" Even buried under the pillow, Sharon could still smell them. Diane smiled. "And biscuits."

"Did someone say biscuits?" chimed in a familiar voice from the bedroom area.

Sharon giggled, "Ah, sleeping beauty awakens!" The two women looked up (or as up as Sharon could raise her neck to look) to find Jim and Blair heading toward the couch area. Blair cleaned off some of the glass from the coffee table near Sharon's head, and sat down to check on her. Concerned, he asked, "how are you feeling?"

That 'mothering' tone in Blair's voice was exactly what Sharon wanted to avoid. Still, she appreciated the heart behind it. He had, after all, never seen this side of her before, and he was handling it rather well. She gently pushed the pillow off of her head and slowly sat up. "Actually, I'm feeling much better. I could probably use a full body massage, but other that that everything's okay."

Not knowing the full details of her workout, Diane called from the kitchen, "need some ice, Share?"

"No," she replied, then added, "but if you could get me my heat lotion I'd appreciate it." Diane rummaged around in the 'junk drawer', then tossed the requested bottle to Jim. He gave the bottle to Sharon, but Blair stopped her before she could open it, asking her, "would you like me to-"

She understood exactly what he was getting at and smiled her agreement, handing her the bottle. "Sure." She moved forward slightly on the couch to allow him easy access so he could massage her neck and shoulders. Jim raised an eyebrow at how 'familiar' the two of them had seemed to become with each other, but Diane shrugged it off, and Blair gave him a look that screamed, 'not now', so he let it go, promising himself to ask Blair about it later. As the heat from the lotion helped her to immediately relax, Sharon's curiosity took over, and she asked Jim, "so what are you guys doing here, anyway?"

Jim replied, "Diane came over this morning, and since you two hadn't come back yet, we went out looking for you. She seemed to figure that this was the most likely place you'd be. So for the most part, I'm just along for the ride on this one."

Diane brought over the tea, the biscuits, and her briefcase. "Well, besides hearing about what happened at the concert yesterday, I was hoping that I could get some input from the three of you on how we should set up the security for tomorrow night..." Above all else, Diane knew that the best thing for Sharon to do when she had a night like the one she just had was to dive right back into the case. The young agent often did her best thinking once she literally beat the frustration out of her system. As Sharon sipped her tea and looked at her with increasing interest, the Commissioner pulled out the floor plans for the Mystic Center and they got started.


	8. Chapter 8

The rest of the day went by far too quickly for them. Diane went to apologize to Simon and inform him of the results of their meeting, since he had been left standing outside the door to Jim's loft wondering where everybody had run off to. The group then informed Chief Warren and the rest of the task force and security detail of the plans in a briefing later that afternoon. The gentlemen all went to get their tuxedos re-fitted, while Sharon went for a full massage and a yoga class, knowing that she needed to work all of the knots and kinks out of her system if she was going to be in top condition to take on Green the next night.

Jim, Sharon, Deborah and Blair were going to be in the Mystic Center for the full day on Monday in the preliminary rounds of the competition. They all knew that they had access to go backstage regardless if they were still competing, but Diane and Sharon insisted that they continue with their original plan, as it would draw less attention to their presence. Sharon insisted that there was a chance that he would show up during the preliminary rounds, either to set up the bombs, in which case he would be lurking around backstage and in the technical areas, or to gloat over his handiwork, in which case he would either be skulking around in the general area of the center, or he would try to get in with the small audience that was to be allowed in for the preliminaries. Either way, every entrance and exit would, according to Simon, be guarded by two security guards, one cop, and one Fed. In addition, Diane had four people undercover with the tech unions: one in lighting, two in sound, and one stage hand. Jim, Sharon, Deborah, and Blair would also be backstage, and Diane would be in the audience as a judge. It would be almost impossible for him to get in there without being seen, and each and every cop in the area would be miked and/or wired, depending on their particular assignment. If he were spotted within a mile of the Mystic Center, everyone would know within seconds.

Jim caught a brief glimpse of Sharon as she finished her third round song. After the reaction that "Someone..." had gotten at the club the other night, she had changed the order of her songs: "All Fired Up" first, then "Any Man of Mine", "Vision of Love", and "Someone..." for the finals. [She's definitely giving this her all,] he thought, [I wouldn't be surprised if she did win.] There was something at the edge of his senses trying to get his attention, but he tried to push it away. There had been no sign of Green all morning, and the team of bomb- sniffing dogs the mayor sent in to search the center before the first round turned up nothing. Still, the unknown smells and sounds were nagging at the back of his mind, and they kept splitting his focus.

Blair noticed Jim's revolving concentration, and asked him, "Jim, are you okay? What's going on?"

"There's something weird going on, chief. I hear something, like a ticking sound. It almost sounds like a watch, but it doesn't, you know? It keeps bothering me."

"Let your hearing lead your sight to the sound, Jim. Can you see what it is?"

Jim closed his eyes for a minute so he could focus his hearing on the sound. He then opened his eyes, and looked up...

One of the sandbags was causing the ticking sound.

* * *

Sharon was off-stage by this point, and heard Jim over her earpiece, stating, "Sir, I've picked up some suspicious activity on the catwalk above the stage. I'm going to check it out." She looked up and saw Jim pulling up one of the sandbags. She prayed that it wasn't what she thought it was. Apparently, though, God wasn't the one controlling A.J. Green, and she watched in shock as Jim pulled the wires out of a detonator.

[Okay, think Driver, think!] She pulled up every bit about Green she could think of. [He's going to want to watch his own work, right? So where would be the best place to do it?]

* * *

Jim and Blair collapsed on the catwalk, half in shock and half in relief. Then Blair's face darkened as he realized something. "Jim, you know what this means?"

"What's that, chief?"

"Well, you said the dogs went over every inch of this place, right?" Jim nodded. "And they didn't find anything?" Jim nodded again, and looked down at the detonator he still held in his hand. If there was one bomb here, knowing Green, there were more. A lot more. And they could be anywhere.

And he was the only person who could find them.

* * *

Sharon whispered discretely into her microphone, "Diane, I think you should find a way to calmly evacuate the building."

Over her earpiece, Diane asked, "might I ask why?"

"Jim just found one of Green's little surprises in a sandbag above the stage."

* * *

Diane stood up and announced to the unsuspecting final female vocalist contestant, who was still in the middle of her song, "Thank you very much. You may go now. We'll post the results in two hours. In the meantime, the security team needs to do a final check of the building before the finals tonight, so if everyone in the auditorium could please leave, your cooperation would be greatly appreciated."

She then turned to the judges and murmured to the group, "Please make sure that this happens. I just received word of the possibility of a bomb in the building."

Discretely, the judges rose from their chairs and started to escort people out of the building.

As fast as they possibly could.

* * *

Sharon's brain was working at the speed of light, trying to figure out where Green was. He was here, she could feel it in her gut, and her gut was almost never wrong. It was just a matter of figuring out where he was.

She looked out from behind one of the stage curtains and noticed for the first time the wall of glass along the top of the rear of the Center. She grabbed one of the stage hands, who was trying to exit the building, and asked him what was back there. Hastily he replied, "the broadcast booth. It's where they control the TV cameras and movie projectors and stuff. Well, bye!" He then took off toward the nearest exit.

[Movie projectors, huh? It's as good a place to start as any.] She started to make her way toward the staircases in the rear of the center, hoping to discretely make her way up to the broadcast booth.

* * *

The commotion going on down by the stage area woke Alex from a sound sleep. He figured he would be safe up in the broadcast booth, since they weren't going to televise the competition. Everything was set and ready to go for the finals. He had camped out there overnight so that he wouldn't have to worry about security in the morning, conveniently hiding in an air duct while they were performing their little 'bomb sweep'. He had taken a nap, figuring the commotion beneath him was people coming in to see the finals. He smiled and looked out at these people who didn't know it was the last night of their lives...

[Where is everybody going in such a hurry?] he thought. Then he looked up at the area above the stage- And saw Jim Ellison and his geek partner Sandburg, scanning the area carefully. They pulled up one of his treasures, and took all of the wires out of it.

Furious, he screamed, "NO! It wasn't supposed to happen this way!" He had hidden his detonator in a parking garage across the street, figuring he would use the dinner break to sneak out to his 'fireworks viewing area'. He opened the door to get out...

And found himself face to face with a slightly startled Sharon Driver.

* * *

Sharon regained her composure quickly. "A.J. Green?"

He didn't say a single word in response. He simply pushed her out of the way and ran toward the catwalks.

[Why do these guys always have to be so quick?] she thought. Then she ran out after him, calling into her mic, "Jim! I've found Green! He's on the catwalks, headed your way! I'm in pursuit!"

* * *

Jim heard Sharon on his earpiece, and commanded Blair, "get out of the building, now!"

Blair was about to argue, but one look in Jim's eyes silenced any possible protests, and he ran for the ladder.

Jim took off in the direction of the two sets of footsteps running along the catwalks.

* * *

Sharon heard Jim in her earpiece, "does he have the remote on him?"

"I don't think so," she replied. "If he did, we'd be dead already."

She never took her eyes off Green's back, so she was startled for a bit to see him drop to the floor of the catwalk. She was running so fast that she literally ran right over him and into Jim, bouncing off him like a sprinter hitting a padded wall...

and landed right in the arms of A.J. Green, who put her in a hammer lock with a gun pointed to her head.

[Did a black cat cross my path or something?] she thought.

* * *

Jim tried to point his gun at Green's head, but he positioned himself so Jim couldn't get a shot off that wouldn't hurt Sharon in the process. He barked out, "put the gun down, Green!"

"Not a chance, pig!" he spat out in retort. "I want to see you burn!"

Jim looked at Sharon for a second, and what he saw reassured him greatly. She was mumbling and crying like any typical 'terrified hostage', but her eyes, the eyes that Green were now trying to use as a shield, betrayed her true sprit. She was poised and ready to get out and end this, whenever Jim thought the time was right. She was just waiting for a signal.

* * *

Sharon saw Jim's jaw unclench, and she tensed slightly. At Jim's slight nod, she kicked Green in the knee, which distracted him enough that his hands loosened, sending the gun to the stage below. She then slipped out of his hands, dropping to the floor of the catwalk between Green's legs, and landed a swift kick to his groin. Green doubled over in front of her, and before she or Jim had the chance to catch him, he rolled off of the catwalk and onto the stage below, snapping his head back onto the stage floor in the process. She was afraid of what that might have done to their suspect, and one quick look at Jim confirmed it. He was definitely unconscious, and very likely dead.

* * *

[Well, maybe the black cat didn't cross my path after all,] thought Sharon. Green was unconscious, but very much alive, and since Simon had heard most of the fight over Jim and Sharon's wires, the paramedics were there within thirty seconds of Green's impact with the stage. According to the paramedics, he probably broke his back, and had some internal bleeding, but he was most likely going to make it.

The task force did another, this time much more detailed sweep of the Mystic Center and the surrounding area, and found not only the other thirty-five bombs (in addition to the seven Jim had discovered), but the command center in the security office of the parking garage across the street. The murder of the security guard was just one more thing to add to Green's list of crimes.

Now that their 'unabomber' was gone for good, Jim and Sharon could focus on the one challenge left for them on this case.

Both of them had qualified for the finals.

* * *

[Now this is an interesting dilemma,] thought Diane. She had seen all of the other judges electronic votes, and the computer was now waiting for her decision in the male vocalist category. The current standing was a 4-4 tie between Jim Ellison and his closest competitor, Chris McMasters. Both men were quite good-Jim being far better than she had really expected, even after seeing him at the club. Her vote would decide the competition. She noticed Jim watching from the wings, and waved slightly to get his attention. He started to head toward her, but she shook her head and pointed to her ear. He wasn't quite sure what she meant by doing that, but then he saw her start to speak, and focused in...

"Can you hear me, Jim? Can you hear me?" He nodded, smiling. She was speaking at barely a whisper, and if anyone else had actually heard her, they would have no idea who she was talking to. "Wow. This is interesting. Anyway, we can't be seen together talking about this, or it would jeopardize the rest of the competition. The other judges have cast their ballots, and it's a 4-4 tie between you and someone else for the title. The others don't know that you're a cop, so it's up to me. I would love to cast my vote for you, but since I know how you are about publicity, I wanted it to be your choice. Either nod your head yes or shake your head no. I'll vote based on that signal."

She looked around to see if anyone was looking at her, then looked Jim straight in the eye, and cast her vote.

* * *

The 'celebration' was definitely not what Jim expected. Instead of some big exhibition show at the Mystic Center, it was actually a gala party at Planet Hollywood. He, Simon and Blair relaxed at the corner table Sharon had been able to reserve for their group: himself, Sharon, Blair, Deborah, Simon and Diane. Sharon was onstage, singing her 'victory' song, "If You're Not in it for Love (I'm Outta Here)". [Much as I love her voice, I don't understand _what_ she sees in country music. I hope she uses that contract for something other than a country album. Maybe she can find whoever wrote that "Someone" arrangement for her and they can team up.]

Deb had retreated to the ladies' room to freshen up, and Diane had left briefly to greet Julia and Chris when she spotted them. You almost didn't need to be a Sentinel to hear her scream, "What! Congratulations!". He watched briefly as she embraced her younger brother, and (apparently) future sister-in-law. She motioned for them to join their group, but they bowed out, and made their exit after another round of hugs. The song ended just as Diane made her way back to the table, announcing, "Gentlemen, my assistant and my kid brother are getting married!" All three men raised their glasses in an enthusiastic toast, and Diane sat down.

As Sharon returned to the table, Diane, who by now had had quite a bit to drink, calmly asked Jim, "so, have you told them about how you turned down fame and fortune today?"

Simon and Blair looked over at Jim with the same surprised looks on their faces. Jim just shrugged while Diane explained, "it was a dead-heat tie in Jim's category, with my vote deciding the winner. Since I knew how much this big lug hates publicity, I asked him if he wanted me to vote for him. He said no, McMasters gets the glory, and Jim here goes back to serving and protecting the fine citizens of Cascade."

Blair smiled and raised his glass again in a toast, "to Jim Ellison."

Deborah joined the group at the table as the group raised their glassed, "to Jim." Deborah then asked, "so what are we toasting Jim for, guys?"

Jim looked over to her, smiling, and stated simply, "I'll tell you later," as he chugged down the last of his glass of beer.

Simon turned to Diane and declared, "You know, Diane, I happen to have quite a bit of singing experience myself."

"Oh really," she replied, "you never told me that." Sharon, too, looked surprised, then turned to Blair out of curiosity and asked, "what about you, Blair? You sing?"

"Nope," he replied, "play a mean bass guitar, though."

Now it was Jim's turn to look surprised. "You never told me that, chief. Where'd you pick that up? On second, thought, don't tell me, I have a feeling I don't want to know."

Diane smiled at the easy rapport between the two men. "What about you, Detective?"

"I used to play the drums, actually."

Blair gawked at him in shock. "Then why do you always hate the music I play?"

"I played _music_, Blair. The stuff you play is nothing more than noise with cultural history behind it."

Blair was about to respond to that, but then he saw the look in Sharon's eye. It was the same look she got before she told them the idea about the club gig. Cautiously, he looked at Sharon, and asked her, "Share, what idea is going through that sick, twisted little mind of yours this time?"

"You guys ever jam together? No, of course not. But, you want the chance?"

All three men nodded in agreement. Sharon then excused herself, and went back up to the stage, where the backup band was just finishing a set. After a brief conversation with the lead singer, she came back to the table and ordered, "okay guys, you're on right after this next song."

All three men looked at each other, their eyes trying to say 'what did we get ourselves into?'. Then, excited, all three men ran for the stage, ready to go on. As they took over their instruments from the members of the band and started up "Born to be Wild", they all looked like they had been jamming together for years. Diane looked at them, then at Sharon, and declared, "Share, I think you created a monster."

Deborah added, "a big, ugly, three-headed monster."

All three women looked at each other, burst out laughing, then attacked the dance floor.

* * *

**~END~**


End file.
